Episode 35: What If Nothing Has Gone Wrong?

Sometimes life stings — literally and figuratively. Whether it's a wasp on your finger, an illness, or the kind of loss that leaves your world in ashes, it's natural to feel like something has gone terribly wrong.

But what if it hasn’t?

In today’s episode, I’ll show you why “nothing has gone wrong” isn’t a dismissive thought, but rather a deeply compassionate way to meet life’s hardest moments. If you're feeling overwhelmed by something unexpected, unwanted, or unfair… this one is for you.

Schedule a free 1:1 mini session with me and let's talk about this. 

Full Transcript:

You're listening to the Think New Thoughts Podcast with Emily Ricks, episode number 35, What If Nothing Has Gone Wrong?

I'm Emily Ricks, and this is Think New Thoughts, a life coaching podcast to help you find more joy in your relationships. In each episode, I'll share a simple idea that will help you see things in a new way, so you can love God, your neighbor, and yourself more deeply than you ever have before. If you're ready to literally change your mind, I think you'll like it here.

I remember one time I was playing soccer at recess. I was probably eight or nine years old, and I felt something crawling on my head, so I flicked it off and then found out it was a bee, and it stung me right on my middle finger. I was stunned and shocked, and then I was mad.

Like, hey, you were the one crawling around in my hair, and now I'm the one who got stung. I remember being in a lot of pain that afternoon after I got home from school, and my sister recommended that I soak my finger in hot water to reduce the swelling. I think she'd had an ankle or a knee injury where soaking in hot water had reduced the inflammation for her, so she meant well, but soaking my finger in hot water actually made it swell up to, like, double its regular size, and then it was so itchy and so uncomfortable for days.

It was the worst. When my son Ethan was in third or fourth grade, he was playing basketball out in our front driveway. He got stung by a wasp, and he was so mad.

Like, outraged. You could see he felt violated by this act of aggression, and then appalled when he realized that there was a whole nest of them inside the pole of his basketball hoop. Like, this was not okay with him.

One time, my kids were playing at a friend's house, and the daughter got stung by a wasp, and she came inside looking for her mom and was just screaming. She was terrified and confused and could barely breathe. She was crying so hard.

I think a lot of times kids feel violated when they get stung because it's so unexpected, and it's a new sensation, and they don't really understand why it happened, and it can be scary and also super painful, right? I'm guessing you have a story where you got stung or you saw someone else get stung, and I bet there were a lot of emotions. Just a few days ago, my son's friends were helping me take covers off our patio seating so they could sit outside and drink some smoothies. As I was opening one of them to get it folded, I felt a very sharp stabbing pain, guess where? In my middle finger.

At first, I was confused, like, ah, what was that? And then I saw a wasp fly out of the chair cover, and I realized I'd been stung, and it really hurt, but I didn't have a negative emotional response to this sting. It was really interesting. Once I realized what had happened, I felt a certain kind of calm, and while I did not like the throbbing pain and did not exactly look forward to the swelling I knew would come next, I also understood why the wasp had stung me.

He was stuck inside the chair cover, probably feeling very disoriented and threatened when I started to move it around, and so he protected himself by zinging me. It made sense to me, and I felt calm because I've survived a sting before. I've healed from it before.

I know I'm not allergic. I know to not soak it in hot water, that ice actually helps reduce the swelling, and I know in a few days it will most likely heal. So I finished folding up the patio chair covers and then went inside and iced my finger, and it was painful, but I wasn't outraged.

I wasn't appalled. I wasn't terrified. I just had zinging pain in my finger, but other than that, I felt cool as a cucumber, and I was thinking about it afterward and realized that part of what I was thinking when it happened was nothing has gone wrong.

Wasps sting people sometimes. It's fine. It hurts.

It's painful, and also pain is part of life, and this will be fine. The thought nothing has gone wrong isn't an attempt to negate the pain. The truth is this hurts.

It's painful, and I didn't want it to happen, and yet as my finger started to swell, I was like, yep, nothing's gone wrong here. This is what my finger is supposed to do. The swelling and the itching is my body releasing histamine and other chemicals to wall off the venom and repair the damage.

This is exactly what should be happening right now, and the wasp did exactly what it's supposed to do when it feels threatened. My body's meant to feel pain to alert me of the issue, so I can be aware of it and then notice the swelling and then ice it to bring the swelling down. It hurt to get stung, and yet ultimately nothing went wrong.

Actually, everything went right, and that's interesting, isn't it? Same circumstance. Getting stung on my middle finger even and thinking this is not supposed to be happening produced a different feeling for me as a kid than thinking nothing has gone wrong produced for me as an adult. This is true when you're fighting an illness too, right? Like when you get sick, it can feel like something has gone terribly wrong, but symptoms like a fever, sore throat, or cough are actually signs that your body is doing exactly what it was designed to do.

It's inconvenient to get sick, but a fever helps your immune system work more efficiently. Inflammation, mucus, that's part of your body's built-in defense system that clears out the infection. So even in the discomfort, your body's actually healing.

Nothing has gone wrong. Things are going right. So this is a powerful idea that nothing has gone wrong, and it can be really helpful when something happens that you didn't want to happen and you're feeling the sting of physical or emotional pain or both.

But I want to make it really clear that choosing to believe this thought that nothing has gone wrong is not saying you're not in pain. It's not saying you wanted this thing to happen. It's not telling yourself you should just snap your fingers and heal immediately and pretend like nothing happened.

To truly believe nothing has gone wrong is not a dismissive thought. It's not stuffing down pain or disappointment or heartache or grief. It's actually a very compassionate thing to tell yourself because it releases you from having to fight against the reality.

It sets you free from trying to change something you can't change. To believe that nothing has gone wrong is a courageous acceptance of pain as part of the curriculum of life, and this acceptance will help you to face the pain with grace and humility and compassion. But I totally understand if you don't like this thought.

You don't have to think it if you don't want to. If it doesn't feel compassionate or kind, if it feels dismissive and cold-hearted, just remember you're not saying life isn't challenging. You're not saying there's no pain involved, but you are zooming out from the intensity of this present moment and considering that in the eternal scheme of life, the biggest struggles are going to be what fosters your growth.

And so in that sense, nothing has gone wrong when our challenges bring us to our knees. That's actually how it's meant to be. So let me share one more way of thinking about this that I hope feels inspiring and full of love and hope and possibility.

Before my sophomore year of college, I took a trip to Yellowstone National Park with my mom and dad. We saw Old Faithful and the paint pots and all the cool geothermal attractions. And I remember going into a small museum that had some displays about the wildfire that spread through Yellowstone in 1988 and burned almost 800,000 acres.

So like more than 35% of the national park. And I remember seeing the pictures of the devastation of that fire and reading about the tragedy and the loss that people felt. And also the controversy of whether to let wildfires burn or to intervene and try to stop them.

I remember vividly stopping in my tracks as I read a placard that explained the ways that a fire actually benefits a forest's ecosystem. The Yellowstone fire had happened in 1988. The year I was there was 2002, so 14 years later.

And here's what I learned. When taller trees burn down, smaller plants and shrubs are able to access sunlight. And so a new cycle of plant life begins.

There are certain types of pine cones, serotinous pine cones, that hold on to their seeds until they're exposed to extreme heat. So when a fire comes through, the heat opens these pine cones up and tons of new seeds are released into the soil as a direct result of the fire. This was stunning to me to learn that forest fires allow important nutrients to re-enter the soil, and when entire areas are burned down, it creates new habitats for plants and animals to thrive.

Isn't that just mind-blowing? So did something go wrong when hundreds of acres of Yellowstone National Forest burned down in 1988? It depends on how you choose to think of it. Here's a quote I love. A pessimist would conclude that one summer's fires destroyed more beauty than all the inhabitants of the earth could create in many years, while an optimist would go singing through the blackened, misshaped world rejoicing because the forest will look just as beautiful as before in two or three centuries.

Take your choice. So my friend, whether you get stung by a wasp, face an illness, or experience tragic loss and feel that your world has been burned down, I want to offer to you that nothing has gone wrong. I don't say that to dismiss your pain or to minimize it.

I actually hope you feel pain when you experience sickness or disappointment or heartache. Something would be wrong if you didn't feel pain in these circumstances. Next time you feel the sting of physical or emotional pain, next time you get singed by the fire that destroys something very important to you, I want to encourage you to acknowledge to yourself, this is pain.

This is part of my journey. Acknowledge the pain, lean into it. This hurts.

And it's supposed to, but nothing has gone wrong. Imagine if you could fast forward to the end of your life, and if you could stand in a museum, reading the placards, seeing the images of how the things that you went through that felt so painful and so devastating actually were the very things that propelled you into the most growth. What if you could understand what it means for your life when the forest ranger says, fire is not the end of the forest.

It is instead a massive jolt to the forest's living systems and just the beginning of a new stage in the life of a wilderness. I know it might feel impossible to believe, but what if nothing has gone wrong? If you want to believe this thought, but you're not sure how, I'd love to help. Go to emilyrickscoaching.com/minisession to reserve a time for your free mini session with me.

I can't wait to visit with you. Thanks for joining me today.