Although it’s much easier to use a positive experience as inspiration – perhaps becoming a compassionate, kind and encouraging teacher because that is what you learned from your home environment - any negative experience can become an inspiration as well.

Take Malala Yousafzai, the young Afghani activist who the Taliban shot when she was 15 in an effort to nip her fierce advocacy for women’s education, which was threating their supremacy, in the bud. She could have withered during her grueling recovery period but instead the experience propelled her onto the world stage. In 2014 she became the youngest Nobel Peace Prize recipient at age 17 and a louder and more passionate advocate for women’s empowerment through education than she could have ever been in her small village back home. Or take the many sexually harassed and abused boys, girls and women who are speaking up publicly in ever greater numbers. They are taking so much pushback from those who want to hide their vile actions that have been condoned for too long. Nevertheless the #metoo and #metooincest movement has snowballed in such a short amount of time thanks to these courageous people who turned a negative experience around to spread awareness and prevent such behavior from being pushed under the cultural rug any longer.

It really is about what you make of the experiences life throws you. You can take a crushing experience high or low, you can wither or thrive, you can come out in the open or keep it all under the rug. In the end it’s less about the experience itself than what you make of it. Up to you. It’s a choice.