Quotes & Sayings About Bad Past Experiences

When our personal world is dark, we seek to fix the blame on any one of a number of factors - heredity, parents, destiny, what is known as bad luck or the bad break, and occasionally even on God.

It takes a long while to learn that sometimes we, ourselves, put out or, at least cloud over, our own sun, and that all things balance in the end. In nights of darkness we forget the shining days, though everyone experiences both. — Faith Baldwin

Real Love for ourselves by definition includes every aspect of our lives - the good, the bad, the difficult, the challenging past, the uncertain future, as well as all the shameful, upsetting experiences and encounters we'd just as soon forget. — Sharon Salzberg

Great experiences are built on a foundation of bad experiences. — Tim Fargo

A fool thinks it like honey so long as the bad deed does not bear fruit, but when it does bear fruit he experiences suffering. — Gautama Buddha

Music lets me forget bad experiences. You cannot keep ragas and regrets in your mind together. — Ustad Bismillah Khan

When you reflect, you are able to put an experience into perspective ... reflective thinking enables you to distance yourself from the intense emotions of particularly good or bad experiences and see them with fresh eyes. — John C. Maxwell

Aching all over, we reached level ground again, and Mr. Christy withdrew his claims, and agreed that no road anywhere else could possibly be so bad as a Mexican road; a decision which later experiences only served to confirm. — Edward Burnett Tylor

There seldom is a single wave. Another way to look at it is, 'when it rains, it pours.' Good luck or bad luck often followed by more of the same. Whatever path you begin, it's almost impossible to change your direction. You're sent hurtling through space, crashing through experiences decided by the first few decisions you ever made. Binary choices set against something as simple as a yes or no in your earliest stages of development. As a Future Child, that would be your primitive choices in Genus. Actions, friendships, whether to smile in one moment or frown in the next. Those are all paths that, once set upon, are entirely unchangeable. At least, that's what I was designed to think. — Brandon R. Chinn

If we choose to believe that we're responsible for our experiences, the good and the so-called bad, then we have the opportunity to outgrow the effects of the past. We can change. We can be free. — Louise Hay

Great champions learn from past experiences, whether those be good or bad. A lot of times a guy needs to be knocked down before he gets up and fights. — Paul Azinger

When you see evil do not form ideas that are in the likeness of that evil; do not think of the evil as bad, but try to understand the forces that are back of that evil - forces that are good in themselves, though misdirected in their present state. By trying to understand the nature of the power that is back of evil or adversity, you will not form bad ideas, and therefore will feel no bad effects from experiences that may seem undesirable. At the same time, you will think your own thought about the experiences, thereby developing the power of the master mind. — Christian D. Larson

I came to accept and embrace my past - both the good things and the bad. I wouldn't be who I am, or where I am, if I hadn't had my experiences and trials. — Megan Thomason

The fact that God can bring character development and personal growth out of any situation is conditional on people's willingness to submit to God's will. God is sovereign over every life, but those who yield their will to him will be shaped according to his purposes. When God directs a life for his purposes, all of life is a school. No experience, good or bad, is ever wasted (Rom. 8:28). God doesn't squander people's time. He doesn't ignore their pain. He brings not only healing but growth out of even the worst experiences. Every relationship can be God's instrument to mature a person's character. — Henry T. Blackaby

It is not that suffering or failure might happen, or that it will only happen to you if you are bad (which is what religious people often think), or that it will happen to the unfortunate, or to a few in other places, or that you can somehow by cleverness or righteousness avoid it. No, it will happen, and to you! Losing, failing, falling, sin, and the suffering that comes from those experiences - all of this is a necessary and even good part of the human journey. — Richard Rohr

You can pretend that bad things will never happen. But life's a lot easier if you realize and admit that sometimes they do. — Lois Lowry

I don't really want to leave anything in life behind. We have bad experiences, we have difficult experiences, but if you leave everything behind, you have no past. — Joshua Oppenheimer

Disease, then, is one of those bad experiences that turns information into knowledge and knowledge into wisdom. The bad experiences that make you love yourself and your body and the world. And make you know that you are in a game that has to have a happy ending. — George Sheehan

The stories teach them valuable life lessons. That good things happen to bad people. That it's possible to make a bad situation even worse if you don't think it through. That parents are clueless except when they're not. That it's good to try new things even when a new thing is kind of disgusting, because new experiences make you a well-rounded person. That art can be transcendent. That lust is all-powerful, that drugs are fun, and that not everyone who does them is a loser. That losing people is part of life. That where comedy goes, tragedy isn't far behind. That everyone has issues with their bodies, but some take it too far, almost to death. That fear can be exhilarating. That boys are assholes. That it's important to look forward and never look back ... — Megan McCafferty

At the bottom no one in life can help anyone else in life; this one experiences over and over in every conflict and every perplexity: that one is alone. That isn't as bad as it may first appear; and again it is the best thing in life that each should have everything in himself; his fate, his future, his whole expanse and world. — Rainer Maria Rilke

Live your life remembering good experiences, the bad ones were just lessons — Michello Borgo

One of my goals is to reduce the possible negative moments in life that I can have direct influence over. Bad situations and events will inevitably happen in everyone's life, at some point, but your reaction can affect the situation more than the initial problem if you allow it to. You have power over your actions. A negative moment can ruin your life, or be the foundation of your success. Being nice and smiling allows you the most opportunities to gain positive experiences in life. — Brian A. Jackson

You all know from past experiences that the white man only sees the bad that our people do to them. They are blind to their own indiscretions. — Violetta Botzet Luetgers

Our bad memories and our bad experiences are what make us who we are and what make us grow and allow us to learn, if we choose to see the lessons in those experiences. — Elijah Wood

I think love changes you over time, and whether you have good or bad experiences, you always grow and learn from them. — Leighton Meester

A setback is never a bad experience, just another one of life's lessons. — Richard Branson

To me, he was saying that our reality is shaped by our perceptions. That something is good or bad only because we- you and I- believe it to be so, based on our own experiences. — Nicholas Sparks

None of us want to make God look bad. But in the end, being fake makes God look worse. It makes people think he tastes like Crisco.
Not only that, but when we meet people who have been fed the fake stuff about who God is and what He's about, it's not surprising that they have a little indigestion. So we can either spend our time talking about wrappers or we can show them what God is really made of. We can show them that God is full of love and is the source of hope and every creative idea. People don't want to be told that their experiences were wrong or that their wrapper or someone else's wrapper is made of the wrong stuff. Instead, we get to be the ones to show them real love from God. — Bob Goff

I think we all wish we could erase some dark times in our lives. But all of life's experiences, bad and good make you who you are. Erasing any of life's experiences would be a great mistake. — Luis Miguel

It is imposible to understand sex as we see it nowadays - a mere response to a few physical stimuli. In reality, it is far more than that, and carries with it man's and humanity's entire cultural burden. Each time we face a new experience, we bring with us all past experiences - both good and bad - as well as those concepts which civilization has made into rules. — Paulo Coelho

Life is like a garden. Quite naturally, leaves wither and flowers fade. Only if we clear the decay of the past then and there can we really enjoy the beauty of the new leaves and flowers. Likewise, we must clear the murkiness of the past bad experiences from our minds. Life is remembrance in forgetfulness. Forgive what ought to be forgiven; forget what ought to be forgotten. Let us embrace life with renewed vigor. We should be able to face every moment of life with renewed expectation, like a freshly blossomed flower. — Mata Amritanandamayi

I think people are intimidated by grilling .. maybe it's the flame, maybe it's the big grills, maybe they've had some bad childhood experiences .. but I think that grilling is actually the easiest technique in cooking. — Bobby Flay

We learn in the past, but we are not the result of that. We suffered in the past, loved in the past, cried and laughed in the past, but that's of no use in the present. The present has its challenges, its good and bad side. We can neither blame nor be grateful to the past for what is happening now. Each new experience of love has nothing whatsoever to do with past experiences. It's always new. — Paulo Coelho

As we try to learn from the past, we form patterns of thinking based on our experiences, not realizing that the things that happened have an unfair advantage over the things that didn't. In other words, we can't see the alternatives that might well have happened if not for some small chance event. When a bad thing happens, people will draw conclusions that might include conspiracy or forces acting against them or, conversely, if a good thing happens, that they are brilliant and deserving. But these kinds of misperceptions ultimately deceive us. And this has consequences in business - and for the way we manage. — Ed Catmull

Basically, you can live your life in one of two ways. You can let your brain run you the way it has in the past. You can let it flash any picture or sound or feeling, and you can respond automatically on cue, like a Pavlovian dog responding to a bell. Or you can choose to consciously run your brain yourself. You can implant the cues you want. You can take bad experiences and sap them of their strength and power. You can represent them to yourself in a way that no longer overpowers you, a way that "cuts them down" to a size where you know you can effectively handle things. — Tony Robbins

There comes a moment in our lives when some of the pieces of the puzzle come together - where all our past experiences, both good and bad, are brought to bear in causing us to become who God intends us to be. — Michael Card

Hindsight, I think, is a useless tool. We, each of us, are at a place in our lives because of innumerable circumstances, and we, each of us, have a responsibility (if we do not like where we are) to move along life's road, to find a better path if this one does not suit, or to walk happily along this one if it is indeed our life's way. Changing even the bad things that have gone before would fundamentally change who we are, and whether or not that would be a good thing, I believe, it is impossible to predict.
So I take my past experiences ... and try to regret nothing.
-Drizzt Do'urden — R.A. Salvatore

I don't hide anything about my life, I talk about everything. I talk about it - all kinds of things. I've done songs about bad experiences, a couple about growing up in the ghetto and being abused, sexually. Being raped. And I talk about it. — Lady Saw

It's hard to forget hurtful things, isn't it? Children with autism have good memories. So it's much harder for them to forget bad experiences than it is for us. So fill them with as many good experiences as possible. — Keiko Tobe

Good experiences give us happiness but bad experiences teach us good lessons — Michael Morpurgo

The brain is good at learning from bad experiences, but bad at learning from good ones. — Rick Hanson

The meaning of all addictions could be defined as endeavors at controlling our life experiences with the help of external remedies. . . . Unfortunately, all external means of improving our life experiences are double-edged swords: they are always good and bad. No external remedy improves our condition without, at the same time, making it worse. — Thomas Hora

Sometimes I smoked opium. And I also took LSD - for a while, quite a lot of LSD, in fact. But I never had any bad experiences. I stopped in 1985. I'd had enough, and I don't miss it, either. — Wolfgang Beltracchi

All experiences are welcomed and fully digested, not judged good or bad. — Brenda Shoshanna

I've always thrown myself into different kinds of experiences, sometimes into really bad things. But, you grow up. You become more of a woman and you know yourself. I think knowing yourself is a wonderful thing especially when you're in your 40s and you're kind of in your skin. Life is not so confusing anymore. — Lisa Edelstein

I don't believe in the Law of Attraction. There were things I wanted in my life that no amount of positive thinking was going to make it a reality for me. However, I have learned to believe in the Law of Tough Love. Life has thrown a dozen tragedies at me. I did what any Christian would do
prayed for the outcome I wanted, but God was tough and only gave me what I needed. I now realize that life is not about fulfilling a wish list; rather a need list. Good and bad experiences are on the horizon. How else does a person change, grow and evolve? And just like any warrior woman, I won't simply survive
but thrive! — Shannon L. Alder

So often survivors have had their experiences denied, trivialized, or distorted. Writing is an important avenue for healing because it gives you the opportunity to define your own reality. You can say: This did happen to me. It was that bad. It was the fault & responsibility of the adult. I was - and am - innocent. The Courage to Heal by Ellen Bass & Laura Davis — Ellen Bass

What Stieg Larsson was up to - it was the Swedish guilt over World War II. All of our neighbors had the most terrible experiences with the bad forces, but Sweden didn't. I think we use the thrillers in a different way. We never write a thriller like 'Who is the murderer?' The big question in most of our thrillers is ... 'Why?' — Michael Nyqvist

I'm thankful for some of bad experiences I've had. They helped me with the way I view people and see them for who they really are. — Blake Griffin

In fact, being able to tolerate negative feelings can be crucial to a wide variety of life situations: delaying gratification, learning from bad experiences, truly hearing what other people have to say, and assessing our own circumstances, risks, and opportunities. — Julie K. Norem

My anxiety level was rising pretty fast now. Visits with the FBI can do that to you, I guess. I'd had bad experiences with them before. Ironically, so had Kit. They're good people, mostly, but something got screwed up along the way. I guess that's what happen when J. Edgar Hoover is your daddy. Talk about the road to perdition. — James Patterson

I want to say before I go on that I have never previously told anyone my sordid past in detail. I haven't done it now to sound as though I might be proud of how bad, how evil, I was.
But people are always speculating-why am I as I am? To understand that of any person, his whole life, from birth, must be reviewed. All of our experiences fuse into our personality. Everything that ever happened to us is an ingredient.
Today, when everything that I do has an urgency, I would not spend one hour in the preparation of a book which had the ambition to perhaps titillate some readers. But I am spending many hours
because the full story is the best way that I know to have it seen, and understood, that I had sunk to the very bottom of the American white man's society when-soon now, in prison-I found Allah and the religion of Islam and it completely transformed my life. — Malcolm X

Livingston: Why did users like Viaweb? Graham: I think the main thing was that it was easy. Practically all the software in the world is either broken or very difficult to use. So users dread software. They've been trained that whenever they try to install something, or even fill out a form online, it's not going to work. I dread installing stuff, and I have a PhD in computer science. So if you're writing applications for end users, you have to remember that you're writing for an audience that has been traumatized by bad experiences. We worked hard to make Viaweb as easy as it could possibly be, and we had this confidence-building online demo where we walked people through using the software. That was what got us all the users. — Jessica Livingston

What made me this way was watching my father go through bad employment experiences. When I was 17, and he was 65, I saw him go through the experiences working for a boss that was rude and obnoxious. I swore if I was ever had the capacity to run a company that I would do it in a different way. — Tom Golisano

Negative experiences lower our personal vibrations and we feel bad. This state attracts more negative experiences leading to negative vibrations. Lower vibes are bad for health of the soul. — Hina Hashmi

I had seen the world as either white or black.
It is only when I read the pages of her diary that I understood why the sky looked so grey. — Sanhita Baruah

Through my writing, I learned my Life Lessons from all the experiences in my past, good and bad. Letting go of the drama we create for ourselves is the biggest gift we can ever receive. — KoKo Nervelli

You see, you learn from all your bad experiences, so they're really positive. It's all part of the cosmic knowing. — Nina Hagen

Sex and commerce are fine things, but man cannot live by Viagra and the Dow Jones alone. A life led collecting things and experiences in pursuit of happiness is not necessarily a bad life, but it's not a good life either. Too often, the Democrats act like the Party of Lust, and the Republicans the Party of Greed. Both are deadly sins that eat at the soul. — Rod Dreher

I've done movies that were maybe not worth it, but I try to take the best from every experience. You learn more from bad experiences sometimes. It gives you more will to overcome your mistakes. They give you determination. — Violante Placido

See your hard times through the spectacles of your experiences. They, too, shall pass away. — Ogwo David Emenike