I firmly believe that every experience you have in life, good or bad, was meant to happen. You may never know the reason, but eventually those lessons will prove their value.
The neat thing about it is that you not only learn from yourself and the choices you make, but the choices that everyone in your life makes. It starts when you're just a baby, your mom spills hot water on herself and is clearly in pain. The lesson: hot water hurts. Learning from others — something so simple, manifests into one of the biggest influences in your life.
As we grow up, the life lessons we learn mature with us, the yearly check ups we once dreaded (ew needles) might actually make sense to us now. For example, even if you weren't directly affected, how many of you have met someone with cancer or even a preventable disease? What if the reason that person has had to overcome a health issue is to bring awareness to their friends and family — what if you were one of those people?
Your personal successes and failures at some point or another lead your life in different ways. You graduate college , you land your first job, you move across the country, you meet new people; see where I'm going? Every metaphorical door eventually leads to another throughout your life. But what happens when you're faced with two doors at the same time?
You don't know what will happen tomorrow, let alone a year from now, so you can't wait too long to decide which door is the right one, just go for it. So one of your options is risky, it might not end well, it could be your worst mistake — but take a leap of faith. One of my favorite quotes hits this idea home perfectly:
"Never let the fear of striking out, keep you from playing the game."-Babe Ruth
You will fail at some point: everyone does. You may take a wrong turn that leads to a detour that teaches you more than you could even imagine. It's all a circle really, a streak of bad luck has to end at some point, and when it does, your good luck is just around the corner. Everything that once was the bane of your existence, taught you something — you struggled, you overcame and you learned. This process happens continuously throughout your life and the chain of experiences never ends, but isn't that the beauty of it all? Simply believing that no matter your choices, or where they lead you, it's all happening for a reason.
