I am a horrible cook. You can ask literally anyone I know, and they will tell you the same thing. I don’t know why I am this way, but for some reason, I am. It doesn’t have to be anything too complicated either. It’s not like I’m out here trying to make seven course meals with five star restaurant quality food. I can try to make the simplest dish and still end up destroying it. If I want to boil some pasta and add a little bit of sauce to it, it will still be a train wreck. It will either wind up being too salty or the noodles might not have ended up cooking long enough, which will leave me with crunch pasta. And if I try to follow a recipe, it still winds up bad. I can follow it down to the last letter, and have food that’s barely edible. Gordon Ramsey would laugh me out of the kitchen if I ever stepped inside of one of his.

That being said, I do tend to learn from my mistakes. If I mess up on a dish, I won’t do it in the same way the next time. If last time I added three teaspoons of salt and it was way too salty, then the next time I’ll only add two so that I won’t have the same problem. And on the other hand, if last time it tasted too bland then the next time I’ll add in some more seasoning to give it some extra flavor.

Now I know this cooking scenario is something small. If you mess up on your food nothing life shattering is going to come of it. All you get is something that’s too sweet, too burnt, too salty, or too raw. And the worst thing that might happen is that you’ll have to throw out the food and get some take out instead. But there are experiences out there that are a lot worse than messing up at cooking. Sometimes you make a mistake so huge that you think you’ll never recover from it…

You may end up ruining a friendship over a few harsh words that hit too deeply.

You might spend your life savings on a project that ends up making you broke because you didn’t earn a single penny from it.

You could quit your job and move halfway across the world to follow the “love of your life,” who just winds up cheating on you.

You can make mistakes positive thinker, but the important thing to remember is that you should take the time to learn from them. You’re not perfect, but you can keep on working to improve yourself, and one of the ways you can do this is by making the decision to find the lesson in your trials. Nobody enjoys heartache and pain. I know I don’t! They don’t feel good, so we try to avoid it whenever we can. But remember, after the storm clouds come, a rainbow will appear. Your dark days will provide you with happier ones, and if you look hard enough then you can find something good during that difficult moment. You won’t have to wait until your next happy snapshot before you can feel joy again. Finding the lesson in your trials can really help to bring up your mood…

If you realize that you should value your friendships and not speak negatively to the people you care about, then you won’t have to wait until your next friendship before you start to feel good again.

If you realize that you should always have some money set to the side in case something bad ends up happening, then you don’t have to wait until you start getting that money back before you find happiness again.

If you realize that you should always have something set up for you before you throw something else to the curb, then you won’t have to wait until you find your next job before you start to feel joy again.

Take your bad moments and learn from them. Yes the bad is going to be bad, but it doesn’t have to be as tragic if you can pull something that’s good from it!