How to Properly Celebrate Your "Badiversary"
Fellow Riskologist,
One of the less amazing things about life is that bad things often happen to good people.
Sometimes, these are a result of your own poor decision-making. Maybe you made a bad business investment and lost a lot of money or neglected a relationship that fell a part. Maybe you simply miscalculated and made an honest mistake that hurt you or someone you care about.
Other times, bad things come to you through no fault of your own. Every day, good people get horrible diseases, loved ones pass away, and bad people do terrible things to those who’ve done nothing to deserve it.
As a Riskologist committed to trying new things in life and continuously improving, chances are you’ve experienced both sides of this coin.
I call these my “badiversaries.” God knows I’ve collected a few.
You and I both have a string of failures lined up behind us we’d rather forget, and we can certainly remember moments from our lives we never asked for that came to us anyway.
The natural reaction, of course, is to do everything you can to forget them. In the best of times, you turn to positive psychology, your friends, family. In the worst, you turn to vices and self-harm for temporary relief.
Whichever you choose, one truth remains: your memory defies you.
Over time, you’ll begin to remember events differently. The harshest bits fade. You filter things differently. Memories change.
But, they never go away. For better or worse, these moments you’d prefer to forget are here to stay. They’re a piece of you for the rest of your life.
For that reason, a risk-taker like yourself would be wise to put them to work as an opportunity to become smarter and stronger instead of attempting to ignore them only to be haunted by them the rest of your days.
5 Ways to Properly Celebrate a Badiversary
To properly celebrate a badiversary, the only requirement is that you stop sitting around feeling sorry for yourself and start using the life experiences you have to become a stronger person. Easy!
These experiences are yours after all; you may as well do something constructive with them. Here are just a few ideas I have about how to do that.
1. Throw a private celebration.
A badiversary is rarely a time for a proper party. No guests, cake, or funny hats are a great fit here, but I find it very helpful to set aside some time during the day to at least recognize that, “Here I am on the anniversary of something that went terribly wrong.”
I try not to dwell on it too much, but if I don’t take the time to at least recognize the day, I’ll end up feeling sad or anxious, and I can’t shake it. Nowadays, I’m far too busy with amazing things to lose a whole day to unexplainable anxiety.
By scheduling a piece of my day and dedicating it to just “letting the shit flow,” as I like to put it, I can deal with any weird feelings I’m having all at once, put them behind me, and get back to being awesome again.
To become a more intelligent risk-taker, I recommend finding a way to compartmentalize failures and bad memories so they don’t consume more time than they deserve.
2. Recognize how amazing life actually is.
Even the most unlucky of us can take some solace in the fact that if you count up your life to date, you’ve had far more incredible things happen to you than you have terrible things.
This should not go unnoticed on a badiversary. Be sure to set aside time to remember all the good things going on in your life.
The normal reaction on a badiversary is to dwell on the fact that something has screwed up your utopia. But don’t forget all the things you’ve done and had happen to you that built a utopia to be screwed up in the first place!
Without being flippant about the very real suffering that people sometimes endure, at the end of the day life is still pretty damn good for most of us! And if you’re able to read this article, I’d say that rule applies to you.
3. Reinforce the lessons you’ve learned.
What sets a smart Riskologist apart from your every day risk-taker is that a Riskologist thinks carefully about his life and makes changes to it based on the lessons learned.
While many people wander through life taking risks they don’t even realize they’re taking and learning nothing along the way, you’ve been bestowed with the gift of analysis and the ability to take lessons from less than perfect circumstances.
Not everyone makes use of this gift, but I hope you will. Those that make it the furthest in life and are the happiest tend to be the people who see opportunities where others see only problems.
As you spend some time on your badiversary thinking about the things that went wrong, think of the lessons it provided that have served you well since then.
4. Make a resolution to change something and get started.
Oftentimes, a badiversary will align perfectly with another thing I like to call a Life Altering Event—a moment in time where you’re presented with both the opportunity and the motivation to change something significant about yourself.
When a LAE comes your way, you have to act fast—the effects don’t necessarily last and motivation will fade if left untapped.
If this has ever been the case for you, the proper celebration of a badiversary should include a resolution to do something important for your life. And more than just resolving to it, it’s the perfect opportunity to get started.
When the memories and the lessons learned from a tough time in life come back to you on that fateful day, harness the energy into something productive.
Getting started really is half the battle, and you have a unique opportunity right in front of you.
5. End with a stiff drink.
There are two ways to use alcohol: to numb yourself from pain and forget your problems or to celebrate the victory of a hard-fought battle.
There is something uniquely satisfying about sitting down at the end of a long day of work, looking back on all that you’ve accomplished, and toasting a job well done.
If you’ve done the hard but necessary task of turning your badiversary into a productive piece of your life, you’ve taken quite the stride. Celebrate it. Invite a friend over and pour yourself a stiff drink to toast the day.
Of course, if your badiversary is drug or alcohol related, you might substitute the stiff drink for… umm… a nice falafel or something. Either way, don’t forget to give yourself a pat on the back.
Your Homework Today
Just like a holiday, your badiversary rarely sneaks up on you out of the blue. Instead, you can see it coming. Whether you dread it or welcome it is up to you. Today, take a minute to look at your calendar and find your next badiversary.
Make a plan: When the day arrives, what are you going to do to turn it into a productive part of your life? How will you harness your energy to become a smarter and stronger Riskologist?
Share your answer in the comments if you like.