It is the season to be thankful. However, I felt far from it a few weeks ago. I woke up sick one morning.
It was not COVID (at least according to my rapid test) and I didn’t have a fever. I had everything else though – body aches, headaches, sore throat, etc.
I thought I would recover in 48 hours. I mean most common cold only last that long, right? Boy was I wrong. I felt worse after 3 days. I started coughing and at night, my throat felt like I was swallowing glass. :-(. It was worse than any common cold I have ever had. I lost my voice almost completely and all my energy as well. It felt like it would never end.
So why am I talking about any gifts from this awful situation? Well, believe it or not, after the first few days of struggling against my cold, I finally decided to accept it. That’s when the gifts began to appear. Here are 4 unexpected gifts from my cold. I always believe that there can be gifts and opportunities in any seemingly bad situation. This was no exception.
#1. Gift of Friendship
The sucky part of being sick is I had to start cancelling all my in person plans. I was looking forward to having lunch with “Diana,” whom I have not seen for 18 months. I had to text her that morning to let her know the bad news.
To my surprise, she told me she was sick too and it started a few days before me from her flu and covid shots. Poor girl! While we agreed to postpone our lunch, we also started commiserating on our symptoms over text. We had almost identical symptoms. From then on, every day we would text each other a few times to share a bit about how we were feeling.
Soon enough, we were sharing TMI (too much information) details about not only our symptoms but also our age related challenges. We even got to laugh a little while being sick. It felt good to be not alone. It was the most unexpected development of our friendship. I knew Diana from my last job. We stayed in touch after I left, but we were not super close. Now I actually cannot wait to see her in person and talk more about everything.
I guess the old saying is right. Misery loves company. Out of a miserable situation, she was a great comfort for me and vice versa. We ended up becoming closer friends and started on text to talk about life, work, aging, kids, and everything.
#2. Gift of Perspective
I don’t know about you, but when I am sick, time seems to pass excruciating slowly. While I cannot wait to be healthy again, my cold had other plans. While I hoped to sleep well and wake up a little better, the opposite would happen instead. The more I was impatient to recover, the worse my cold got, it seemed.
Finally, I just gave up and it was only my 4th day into the cold. I got stronger medicine at Walgreens for day and night time and just decided to let the cold take its course. It took my cold another 10 days to get better, however I felt emotionally better sooner. I realized, like every “bad thing” that may happen, “this too shall pass.”
After all, I didn’t have anything serious. It was just a very aggressive common cold. I actually started joking and said this is my body’s way of building a much stronger immune system. I also realized that if I am sick now, that means the chances of me being sick over Thanksgiving and Xmas are much lower. All gave me hope and comfort while I waited for my body to heal.
It is up to us to make a situation either better or worse. While I couldn’t control how I physically felt, I can control I related to my cold. That made a huge difference and probably helped me recover faster.
#3. Gift of Appreciation – for My Work
I had to take 2 days off and shift a bunch of meetings out since I had little energy and lost my voice. This gave me a new appreciation for my work situation.
- I had unlimited vacation so taking time off wasn’t an issue.
- I had a lot of autonomy in how I worked and when I worked so moving meetings out also wasn’t too stressful.
- I had the flexibility to work from home any time I wanted – the beauty of having a national team and partners across the country. For those two weeks, I worked completely from home. For a few days, I was able to nap in between the meetings to heal while working.
Many people was highly empathetic. While my job is not my dream job, it was for those two weeks while I was sick. My team is quite autonomous at this point and my boss doesn’t micromanage. All in all, the work life balance and the flexibility of my job were amazing while I waited for my cold to take its slow and full course through recovery.
#4. Gift of Appreciation – for My Health
Every time I get sick, I cannot believe how awful I feel. I am a highly active person and my mood is tied to my energy level. Having almost no energy was depressing. It reminded me to better appreciate my
health, my body, and my time on this earth. There were so many things I just could not do for those two weeks – no dance classes, couldn’t really play with my 11 year old, etc.. Even walking for more than 20 minutes was hard. I was coughing so hard that I would threw up twice a day for about 10 days straight.
I better appreciated the amazing function of my body. I didn’t have access to me at 100% for two weeks and it felt terrible. Slowly though I got better and magically right around two weeks, I was able to sleep fully again and only had a light cough. I am happily back in my dance class twice a week and also plan to start swimming again at least once a week. We can make all the money in the world, but we only have so much time and so much of our health. I need to keep doing what I can do to use my time wisely and to keep up my health.
How Can My Story Help You
We all get into bad situations we cannot control. This time, for me it was a terrible cold. For you, it can be being laid off at work, getting passed for a promotion, a loved one getting sick, or any number of things. We cannot control what happens to us in life, however we can always control how we respond to it. That is the wisdom we gain with age and experience. Our response to any “shitty” situation can lead us to new learning, new opportunities, and new hope if we let it.
If you are in a bad situation now, see if you can first accept it as what it is. It already happened so you cannot change it. Then ask yourself, how can this be a gift and opportunity? Trying to answer this question alone can help change your perspective and your next actions. Life is an amazing gift from the universe. While we may struggle with all the “downs” that may happen in life, the “ups” are so much sweeter also as a result. I wish you strength, inspiration, new possibilities in whatever is going on in your life and work today. I am always in your corner.
Your comments: Are you in a “bad situation” today at work or at home? How can I help? Does this story help you in any way? I would love to hear from you
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Lei