^No, we all know that’s not true all the time.  Some things are just rubbish dressed as…rubbish…, and no amount of positive thinking, green tea or vinyasa yoga can change that (though bacon frazzles… they might stand a chance).

But, if there’s one good thing about rubbish, it’s that a lot of it can be recycled into something better.  Something stronger.  Something unrecognisable from its previous form.

Exactly the same could be said for some of life’s most ‘rubbish’ experiences.

Yes they can be tiresome.  Difficult.  Emotionally draining; maybe heart-breaking.  There’s no quick fix, and they’re often unavoidable.

Sometimes you can work through life’s rubbish experiences in a matter of hours, but other times it might take weeks, months or years.  Maybe sometimes you can never recover from a rubbish experience completely, maybe you can only increase your ability to exist alongside it.

Now I’m no psychologist and so I can’t explain the science, but what I do find wonderful – despite the paragraph above – is that often, you can only work out what it is you really want by learning to identify what you don’t. This understanding usually comes as result of…you’ve guessed it… rubbish experiences.

(On a similar note if anybody is at a stage in life when they have no idea what they want to do for a career, like I was a decade ago, then you could do worse than read a book called, ‘I Could Do Anything If I Knew What it Was’ by Barbara Sher.  For one of the exercises she asks you to list everything you’d hate about a job, e.g repetition, office work etc.  You then write the antonyms on the other side of the page and – huzzah – from that second list you have a pretty good summary of the characteristics of the kind of jobs you should be looking at)

Sometimes it’s only through experiencing a problem or feeling sensitive to upset that you think about what could help.  What’s the opposite of this feeling?   What’s the pathway to that?

If you’re unhappy with your state of physical fitness but use this negativity to develop the drive needed to stick to a disciplined exercise regime which consequently makes you feel tonnes better, then that unhappiness was worth recycling.

If a relationship breaks down and – after crying in your cornflakes and hiding from the world for a month or two – you become determined to get back into the big wide world, only to meet some amazing new people you wouldn’t have had the chance to meet otherwise, then that heartbreak was worth having, and worth recycling.

If something suddenly happens to expose some vulnerabilities in some context of your life, then you’ll identify the areas which you can make stronger and so that stress becomes…. (take a wild guess why don’t you)… yep, worth recycling.

No, not all rubbish can be recycled, but so much of it can.

Song of the Day: Sidney Gish – I’m Filled With Steak, and Cannot Dance

I discovered this lady last week, on Spotify, and have been listening to her new album on repeat ever since.  Her genius lyrics and jazzy, upbeat tunes have had me bopping around in many a traffic jam this week and the craziest thing is she’s only 22!! I am so envious of her youth and talent!

There’s a lot of tracks Song of the Day-worthy, but because the album is brand new it doesn’t have much of a presence on YouTube yet.  I think this one wins on account of the title alone though.