So I recently came up with a new word: “Blesson.” It means the blessing that comes with the lesson learned from what is usually a bad experience. Usually we can’t see the Blesson until some time after the pain subsides from whatever happened, but when we consciously seek it out and eventually do find it, it puts everything in perspective and even makes us grateful for the experience.
This. Is. Hard. To. Do. But it’s happened to me multiple times and I’ll share one of them with you now:
I have been a musician - singer/songwriter/recording artist - for a long time. When we moved Colorado I had produced 3 CDs of original music and had done a lot of performing. At that point, I felt like I had nothing left to say musically and I thought that I would put that part of my life and career behind me. Some years went by and I felt the urge to write and perform my own music again, but nothing creatively was happening. I was teaching, I was doing some performing here and there, but as far as my own music was concerned, the well had run dry.
I met someone here, we became friends, and then we became close friends, and then something happened that caused us to no longer be friends. It was difficult, it was hurtful, and I came to the conclusion that I wished we had never met in the first place.
Interestingly, while we were friends, I had gone for a short time to a birthday party for this person. While I was there I met a bunch of people, one of whom was a musician. We got to talking, and we ended up exchanging numbers in a “If you ever need someone for a gig” way. A few months later our paths crossed again, we ended up talking for a longer time, and we agreed to meet with our guitars to have a jam session. Between that meeting, and the meeting we scheduled, I wrote 2 new songs. We met, and after that meeting, I wrote 2 more. Shortly after that I wrote 3 more, then eventually 5 more in the span of 4 months. These songs became my fourth studio album, but even better than that, the floodgates had opened and I was no longer dehydrated creatively. I once again felt the joy and excitement of that comes with creating art and since then I recorded a fifth album and as of this writing I’m working on my sixth.
It is overwhelmingly apparent to me that if I hadn’t met the first friend, with whom I had the terrible experience, I wouldn’t have met the second friend, who helped me to unlock my stagnation and returned me to the elation of fulfilling my creative potential musically. One of my true “happy places” is standing at a microphone with headphones on in a recording studio, and after an eight year drought I was able to do that again. And while I would have preferred not to have had my heart bruised (again), I got the Blesson, and it was worth it.
So my advice to you for choosing happiness on a daily basis is to reframe how you look at the tough times in your life. Every single time there is a lesson to be learned, and more often than not, that lesson turns a bad thing into a good thing and makes you better off than you were before. Make the choice to find the Blessons in your life!
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