My Sweetie’s father has passed and we have just gone though all that follows. Visitations, funeral, burial and the complicated process of grieving and saying goodbye, which is likely to continue for some time to come.

This has gotten me thinking about hard days and how we get through them.

On a good day, if you asked me to rank my life on a scale of 1 to 10 (with 1 rating as “shitty” and 10 rating as “perfect”) I would rate it as a 10.

What I found interesting about my reflections is that even on the days that we have just been through, what I would consider to be the bad days, I would still rate my life as a 10.

This got me to wondering how most people would rank their lives.

What number would you assign to your life?

It also made me think about why I felt life is still a 10 on a day when it is 30 degrees Celsius (Canadian here – that’s 86 degrees Fahrenheit if you’re south of the border) and we are doing back-to-back-to-back-to-back viewing, funeral, burial, and reception.

If you think having a perfect life means things don’t break, people don’t die, relationships don’t end or get messy, finances don’t get tight, or work doesn’t get stressful, you will never have a perfect life.

How do we come to believe that everything must go smoothly and according to plan in order to be satisfied with our lives?

If you’ve lived any amount of time at all, you are well aware things never go to plan. Ever heard the saying “If you want to see God laugh, make a plan”?

Media is probably to blame.

We see an endless stream of commercials, shows, Instagram photos and posts that highlight perfect lives and constantly compare them to our own.

We also see lots of tragedy and drama that tells us if these sorts of things are happening in our life, we too are experiencing tragedy and drama.

Here’s how I survive tough days, and even rank them highly.

Accept Things As They Are Instead Of Wishing They Were Otherwise

This is the first step.

The deed is done, as they say. Don’t waste your energy on thinking about “might have been”.

When I was becoming a Chartered Professional Accountant (CPA) the final step after years of working and studying was writing the Uniform Final Exam (UFE). The UFE was a four day exam that you wrote in September and then waited months for the results to come out on “marks day”.

It was a day writers both anticipated and dreaded.

On marks day (a work day) you arrived at the assigned location, a CPA office tasked with handing out the marks, and received a sealed letter with your name on it. Inside was the pass/fail notice along with your mark.

Some writers opened them on the spot and some took them home to the privacy of their living rooms before opening them.

I lived 40 minutes away and High School Sweetheart and I shared a vehicle to come to work, so he was with me. I opened my letter in the car.

Fail. By one mark.

It felt pretty bad to have put in all those years of work to have failed.

Oh, and did I mention, you could only write the exam once a year? I would have to wait an entire year to try again.

It would have been the perfect moment for my monkey mind to start in with thoughts like:

What if you had studied harder?

What if you hadn’t had to go to the bathroom and had those 5 minutes to get that last mark?

What if you had been just a little more focused on that final day of writing when you just wanted it to be over with?

If I’m being honest, I probably did think all those things. I don’t really remember anymore.

Whether I did, or whether I didn’t, it doesn’t change the outcome.

I had to accept what was. I had failed.

Act With Grace

There was a decision to be made in that moment.

Did I take the day off work?

I knew that some of my peers had taken it off already, just in case. Nobody would blame me. In fact it was probably expected.

There was very little work planned for that day anyway. There would be celebrations in the office in the morning for those who passed, lunch paid for by the firm at a local pub, and an afternoon of celebration to follow. No clients would miss me.

However, I knew it wouldn’t be any easier to face my co-workers and bosses the next day.

In fact, it would be worse because I would have a whole day to fester on things before I faced them.

I chose to go to work and congratulate the others in my office who had wrote the exam and passed. They had worked hard and deserved to be celebrated.

It was embarrassing for me (and probably my co-workers) when I walked in and they started clapping and I had to tell them I hadn’t passed. Everyone seemed a little unsure how to react.

I soon asked about the others and went on to give them hugs and congratulations and that broke the tension in the room.

It was one of my first life lessons that taught me that acting with grace in a tough situation made me feel better somehow.

Grow From The Tough Days

In the big scheme of things, failing an exam isn’t the worst thing that could happen to someone.

It felt serious at the time because my career progression felt so tied to it.

In the end, failing that exam was an amazing growth experience for me.

I realized that I was going to be doing the same work for the firm, whether or not I had passed. It wasn’t like anyone got promoted the day after passing!

I also realized that, since I was doing the same work, I should also get the raise that comes with passing the UFE. This was a big growth experience for me because I had to pluck up my courage and ask for the raise that, since I hadn’t passed, hadn’t been offered.

I asked and got the raise. I learned that day that if you don’t ask for what you want, you don’t get it. Another very valuable life lesson put into practice.

The third big take-away from that experience was that many of my co-workers spoke to me privately and congratulated me on my courage for showing up that day. I had earned their respect. They thought more highly of me for it, and they told me so.

Hard times teach us thing we might not otherwise have figured out.

Remember Your Track Record For Surviving Hard Times is 100%

As I said, failing an exam isn’t the worst thing that can happen to someone. Following that day I faced much harder times.

I watched helplessly as a friend lost her baby. My marriage ended. My younger brother told me he had cancer and had 3 months to live (he was in his 30’s). My older brother died in a workplace accident abruptly leaving my sister-in-law and niece without a husband and father.

Every tragedy we experience helps prepare us for the next.

We learn from past experiences that it’s only going to be tough for a while and you will survive 100% of your bad days.

If you are reading this, you have a perfect track record.

You’re still here and still keeping on keeping on.

That counts for a lot.

Remain Grateful

You can still be grateful for the good things on bad days.

In fact, it is even easier to be more grateful for the good things when there is such a contrast happening.

In the same way the bad really stands out, the good really stands out.

I used to feel like it was inappropriate or disrespectful somehow to smile or laugh or enjoy myself at a memorial event.

What utter nonsense.

Although it is sad that someone has passed away, there is joy in the fact that it has brought family together.

During Sweetie’s father’s funeral I was genuinely happy to see family I haven’t seen in a very long time. I was even happier to meet and get to know family I had never met before.

It was wonderful to hear and share stories about his dad and the rest of the family. I learned things that I never would have known if we were not all there together.

Seeing his parents in their wedding photo resulted in the family coming together in a search to figure out the make and model of the car they were standing in front of. In the end, a family friend on the other side of the country, a “car” guy, confirmed for us that it was a Meteor.

These are the things that make life a perfect 10 when life’s circumstances are currently sitting at a shitty 1.

A younger me, who hadn’t already experienced many tough times, would not have wanted to engage in the way that I did.

I would have been totally focused on the death of a father and missed all the moments that a more experienced (I won’t say an older) me was grateful for.

In summary, this is how I survive tough days:

1. 1. Accept Things As They Are Instead Of Wishing They Were Otherwise
   2. Act With Grace
   3. Grow From The Tough Days
   4. Remember Your Track Record For Surviving Hard Times is 100%
   5. Remain Grateful