There is a birthday tradition within my friends and family that we’ve been doing for a long time, which is that every year we ask the question, “what was the biggest lesson you learned in the last year of your life?”

No biggie, right? Just summarize the last year of your life by sharing the biggest lesson you learned. Easy stuff.

It’s been a tradition for over ten years, so people think about this leading up to their birthday because they know the question is coming.

It’s something that I love to ask. I love to hear the responses because, through their experience, I often learn something as well.

Whenever my birthday rolls around, I also answer the question. (Fair is fair.) So on a recent birthday, my biggest lesson was learning how to make space for all that life offers me–the good and the bad times. The hard, challenging seasons and the fun, energetic, optimistic seasons of life.

Until that year, I wasn’t embracing everything that life had to offer.

My tendency with more challenging situations was to go dark or stick my head in the sand and pretend everything was okay. I wanted to keep the peace internally for as long as possible. That was my goal. And so I wasn’t holding the good and the bad equally.

And if I remember correctly, I think I described it with my hands open. So picture me sitting at a table, having just finished the birthday cake. My palms are up, and they’re open. I was saying that on the one hand, we have all of the good. And on the other hand, we have all of the bad. I was clenching the hand with the bad – the hand that holds all the dark and hard seasons. I hadn’t been embracing it as equally as the good.

If I wanted to engage in ways that matter in my life, I had to embrace both equally.

I wasn’t ignoring reality.

I wasn’t trying to say that bad things weren’t happening or that more challenging parts of life didn’t exist. I just didn’t want to make space for them.

Do you remember the episode of FRIENDS with Monica’s closet? Monica is this compulsive neat freak. She cleans meticulously. Everything has a place, and she is the most organized, clean freak of a character you will ever watch.

This episode focuses on a door that’s always been there as a part of the set, but we’ve never seen it opened. Her husband Chandler is trying to break into this door. It turns out it’s a closet, and when asked, Monica says, “I’m not going to let you in there.”

Of course, eventually, he gets into the closet, and it’s stacked floor to ceiling with stuff. When comforted about it, Monica says she has a place for everything in the closet. She knew everything that was in there. But the point is she put all of it behind a closed door. She didn’t make space for those things in her apartment. And that’s kind of how I look at it with myself.

I knew the good and the bad. I knew the hard things that were happening. I knew the challenges I was facing, but I wanted to hide and lock them away. I wasn’t saying they didn’t exist. I just didn’t want to deal with them. I didn’t want to make space for them in my life. My fist was clenched.

In my learning journey to embrace everything that life offers, I have identified three phases that I have to move through.

The first phase is awareness.

Awareness is all about making space for what is. It’s noticing everything happening around you and taking stock of all of it.

You notice the things that you want to shove in a closet and the things that you want to share with the world. Awareness comes first and is the most important because, without it, life is happening to you instead of for you.

When you’re not aware of what’s going on, or you’re not willing to be mindful of what’s going on, then you are shoving things away in a closet to deal with at another time. But the problem is when you’re shoving things away, you’re just shoving them deeper inside of you, deeper inside of your psyche and your being. So if you’re trying to ignore the things that are happening to you, you’re not doing that.

Those things will surface at some point, and you’re going to have to deal with them. But, remember, everything can serve you if you become aware of it.

If you want to become aware, start with these questions.

The first question is as basic as it gets, “what is happening around me?” Think about the situations you’re experiencing or the conversations that are happening. Think about the state of the world, your family, your job– whatever it is, think about it. Be specific and detailed. Most importantly, be honest and don’t try to hide the bad, and don’t only focus on the good.

The second question you have to ask yourself is, “what’s happening inside of me as a result?” Start to identify what’s happening emotionally, spiritually, and mentally inside you. Figure out those emotions you feel because of what’s happening around you and describe them to yourself.

Describe what fear feels like in your body. Describe what happiness feels like in your body.

Once you become aware, you can move on to the second phase, which is acceptance.

I’m talking about total and complete acceptance. This means that you do not get to choose what you accept and what you don’t accept. That is called control. You learn to accept all of it because you trust it will serve you somehow.

When you approach everything that’s happening from this perspective, it becomes a whole lot easier to accept what’s going on around you.

It was hard for me to embrace total acceptance because I thought anything negative would destroy me. I felt that if I allowed negative emotions within me, I would be flatlined and wouldn’t survive it.

I understand now that I have a 100% success rate of surviving. Everything that has already happened to me, I’ve survived 100%. That’s a pretty good track record. The same is true for you too.

How do I know that you have a 100% success rate surviving everything that’s happened to you? Because you’re still alive.

The last phase to move through is allowance.

Allowance is making space for whatever is happening in your life (internally and externally) to exist and move along. I can’t tell you how long it will take. It’s going to be different for every person. Every situation is going to be different for you. But learn to allow and make space for good to exist next to the bad.

Sometimes there’s more good. Sometimes more bad comes along, but it all eventually balances itself out. I’m not trying to be pessimistic. I’m an optimist at heart. And sometimes, the optimist in me still wants to run from this truth. This truth is that life will balance itself out. When you become aware of what’s happening, accept it, and allow it to be.

I’m less miserable, less of the time.

When I ran from the truth that good can exist next to bad within me, I was miserable so much more than I am now. Now that I allow space for all of it, the more challenging moments pass so much faster. When I move from awareness to acceptance to allowance, I don’t waste my energy shoving down the bad. Instead, it goes towards a full, meaningful life.

Decide to embrace all that life has to offer and explore how all of it can serve your evolution as a human. Once you make that decision, you’re going to start to move into awareness, acceptance, and allowance.

We will never live full-time in the good or the bad. But, when you learn to live with all that life brings, you will have a much fuller experience. And when the bad outweighs the good and when the grief outweighs the joy and when the suffering outweighs the pleasure, just remember, you will survive this too. And eventually, life will balance back out.