One day my girlfriend and I were picking up her sister from work. She had told me beforehand that her sister might be getting fired from her job, which she had been working at for six years. When her sister got into the car and told us she got fired, I mumbled a line to myself: “A blessing never looks like a blessing.” At the time, I truly didn’t know what this meant; it just sort of came to me in the moment. Throughout the car ride home, my girlfriend and her sister kept discussing the firing. My girlfriend asked her sister if she would have ever left her comfortable job on her own, and her sister said no. Even though she knew that this job didn’t serve her purpose or make her truly happy, she would never had left. The message here and throughout this section is simple: A blessing never looks like a blessing.

How do you know a bad moment from a good one? How do you know if getting declined by a publishing company is the end of your story and not just the beginning of it? Throughout your life when you have big disappointments, failures, and even setbacks—whether that is being fired from your job, getting rejected from an investor on your new startup, or even breaking your leg—how do you know that the particular situation is a bad moment and not a good moment? In her book When Things Fall Apart, Pema Chödrön offers an example of how we don’t know the difference between a bad moment and a good moment. She writes: “I have a friend dying of AIDS. Before I was leaving for a trip we were talking. He said, ‘I didn’t want this, and I hated this, and I was terrified of this. But it turns out that this illness has been my greatest gift.’ He said, ‘now every moment is so precious to me. All the people in my life are so precious to me. My whole life means so much to me.’ Something had really changed, and he felt ready for his death. Something that was horrifying and scary has turned into a gift.”

Now I ask you, after reading that example, how do you perceive the moments in your life that you think are your “end-all” moments? These are the moments when everything seems so dark that you cannot see even a glimpse of lightness. The moments where you didn’t get the promotion you wanted or when your manufacturer refuses to make your clothes. These are the moments when you tear your Achilles in the middle of your boxing career. How do you perceive these moments? I honestly believe most people interpret those moments as, Why did this happen to me? Why is the world out to get me? Why didn’t God help me? Why does everything bad happen to me? Most people view those moments in a negative light, therefore allowing themselves to sink into a negative state. They may get fired from their job and think for days on end about what is going to happen next. Or they get rejected from a book publishing company and start to live in fear by second-guessing their purpose. They may get news about a disease and start to live in constant fear and worry, which prevents them from living their everyday life with happiness and peace. When these moments happen, remember that they are meant to tear down a regular person, so stand tall and accept them with open arms. Do not waste your precious time living in fear and worrying about those moments, because you don’t know what’s on the other side of them. I got rejected from getting into an education program that would have qualified me to become a teacher. When that experience took place, I had two options: Live daily with stress and fear about what was to come next and continuously ask why this happened to me or understand that this happened for a reason and something greater was in store for me. Now I am the author of a book, I have my own podcast and I live out my dreams daily. If you have a mindset of perceiving your biggest “losses” in the lens of a blessing never looks like a blessing, you will always move forward by constantly growing as an individual and will never bring yourself down when “bad” moments occur. Through faith, understand a blessing never looks like a blessing, because your greatest disappointment, failure, rejection, or setback could be the spark to your greatest accomplishment, success, and blessing in life.

Reed Hastings and Marc Randolph are the founders of the juggernaut streaming video-on-demand service Netflix. Today Netflix is known as one of the most historic start- ups; however, just like all successful people, Hastings and Randolph had to climb up the mountain of success and battle hardships, adversity, and failure. In the year 2000, Netflix was on track to report a loss of $50 million. During their company’s financial trouble, the founders wanted to set up a meeting for months with their brick-and-mortar competition, which at the time was Blockbuster. Blockbuster’s owners finally decided to meet with the young entrepreneurs. During this meeting, the Netflix owners wanted to sell their company to Blockbuster for $50 million so that they could cut their losses and be done with the company. Blockbuster’s CEO and executives listened to the at-the-time “crazy” sales pitch and ultimately laughed Netflix out the door. On the plane ride home, Marc spoke to his friend and said, “Blockbuster doesn’t want us, so it’s obvious what we have to do now, it looks like now we’re going to have to kick their ass.”

The reason I share this story is so that you have a real-life understanding of how a blessing never looks like a blessing. Netflix could have looked at this moment the very same way many of us view our “bad” moments in life by rolling over, questioning our own abilities and purpose, and constantly living in fear and worry. But they didn’t, and neither should you—ever. I truly believe every experience we have in life, no matter how bad it seems, holds a blessing; our goal is to find it, because if we live with this perspective of always finding the blessing in all of our situations, we will forever live with peace, happiness, and joy.