20 Experiences People Had That Changed Their Ways Forever

I used to cashier and was often way more honest than I should have been for working in customer service. Someone asked me how my day was going and I said “I’m considering abandoning ship.” It was during the worst time in my life and I was thinking of packing my bags and moving back across the country to where I grew up.

The customer responded: Don’t abandon the ship. Sail a different sea.
Completely changed how I look at situations and life as a whole.
I wish I could thank him.

I’m now a first-year high school English teacher which has been my dream since I was 11. I’m 33.

The realization that being angry is a choice.

Leaving all toxic people behind. 28 rn but have never been this happy before.

That I have full control of my own happiness. No matter what anyone says, it is their opinion and I have my own as well. What I do that will make me happy, I chose that… whatever the consequences are, I take full responsibility for it.

Happiest I have ever been in the past 2 decades. I wish I knew this when I was younger! I chose my choices!

A few years earlier , I used to HATE K-pop and My friends who liked it. I am born in a Homophobic Family and always saw the world from their eyes. But as Now I grew up a bit , I realized How racist I am becoming !!

I hated them because they have tiny eyes , and because K-pop guys wore makeup !! I was so embarrassed when I learned about Homophobic people , Because I was one and didn’t knew !! Even tho I was just 11 , Im Still embarrassed that how stupid I was.

If we should not judge a book by its cover , Why judge music by its language ? Why judge people by how they look ? WHY JUDGE PEOPLE ??

The time I started to read the Bible on my own – not relying on what others had told me about the Bible…..

When I realized that my life would be so much better for me, emotionally, when I let someone in my life go. Permanently.

When I learned that my doctors didn’t expect me to survive cancer. They told me I’d never see my 40th birthday.

I’m 45 now, but facing my own mortality completely changed me.

The moment in my life that changed the way I think was being told I had stage 3c ovarian cancer. It actually changed a lot more than my way of thinking.

When I found out the church I attended was a bunch of hypocrites and liars. Left that church and religion altogether when I realized all was based on lies and misinformation.

I never truly understood what real helplessness was until my infant daughter had an illness that she might never recover from.

Thankfully everything is fine but I often think of that and it centers me on any life problems I might encounter to provide perspective.

When I was about 9 I went to spend Christmas with my grandmother in Zambia. She had an orphanage and every year would put on a Nativity play and hold a Christmas party for all the children in the village. This particular year she had it on my birthday (21st Dec).

I’d made friends with a girl about my age and even though we didn’t speak each other’s language we were instant friends, as only children can be. During the day my new friend gave me part of an eraser – needless to say, I was confused.

I asked my grandmother why she would give me part of my eraser and her response was ‘that little girl has nothing, but she still wanted to give you something for your birthday.’

To this day I remind myself that often people are giving all they can, even if it doesn’t seem like much to us.

When my son was about 5 I was doing some housework. He came to me and wanted me to play with him. I told him I was sorry, but I was busy. He said, “But you’re always busy.”

I put the housework aside and went and played with him. The housework could wait.

When I realized that nothing really matters, like to the universe. This thought actually helped my depression and anxiety because it lifts some of the weight off my chest, that even if I mess something up, the universe will carry on just fine, it’s not the end of the world if I do/say something wrong.

A black person I worked with was called the N-word by an angry customer. She turned to me and said, “there is nothing I can call you that will ever make you understand how much that hurts”. That completely changed my thinking.

I was doing an internship for my Ph.D. in psychology at a large, public hospital. I told my supervisor about a patient and he asked me what I did about the situation. I told him I didn’t do anything, that I waited to ask him. He said, “If you don’t do anything, who will?” That statement taught me to take on my professional role and step up to help. It guided me through a long career.

When I started a new job as a counselor for inmates in one of our city’s detention centers. I always thought people in jail failed society, but I realized I had it backward – society has failed these people.

I have since dedicated my practice to doing what our prisons fail to do – rehabilitating people, starting with basic skills, and mental health issues.

When I was maybe 9 or 10 I was jealous of the “rich” families in our small town, and I asked my mom why we didn’t have a nice new big house and a nice car.

She told me they probably aren’t really rich, they just have a lot of debt, and it has always stuck with me. Now as an adult I don’t feel jealous, I feel sorry for them because they feel the need to display their “wealth”.

I was in a cruel relationship for years. I didn’t mind being the victim as much as it bothered me that he would mistreat our daughter. I’m normally a non-confrontational person and often had recurring nightmares of the mistreatment. I was being stalked and harassed as I had come to expect from this recurring nightmare, and I kept waiting for someone to save me. These nightmares kept going even after I left the relationship. Then, one night, it occurred to me that nobody was coming to save me. I was on my own. I could either get used to being someone’s domestic plaything, or I could stand up and save myself. So I did.

Five years later, I’m married to an amazing man, and the mistreatment is just a bad memory from long ago. My husband’s friends regard me as a terrifying force of nature. All because I decided to be my own damn hero.

When I found out my favorite dinosaur the Brontosaurus (“B” from now on) wasn’t real. I still believed in Santa so this was my first big “lie”. The guy who found/named it had cludged it together from several dinosaurs and made a fake skull to say he found the biggest one.

Scientists realized the mistake several years later and fixed it but the guy who funded the “B” scientist was a publisher so he continued the lie. I wasn’t heartbroken when the guy at the museum told me. Instead, it hooked me on science because he showed me why.

Science is about finding better answers and it’s okay to correct things that are wrong. For the first time, dinosaurs became real because they weren’t perfect. I became a scientist who chased marmots up mountains and worked in organ banks because of that “lie”.

Happy ending – they found a “B” skull in 2015 that matched most of the other bones from the original “B” and 3 species are back. So a mistaken mistake was corrected. I love science.