Good morning everyone and welcome to the Bed Head Chronicles.

Today, I'm going to give you a little bit of an update about my health. But I'm also hoping that the story that I share will help you with some of the things you're going through in your own life.

So, I have just finished the first cycle of my clinical trial. Now, my dream is that I would be in remission after the first cycle so that I can go into my bone marrow transplant. This would mean that I am moving forward and getting closer to being healed, which is the ultimate goal. I had my hopes set on that.

I found out yesterday that I had made such great progress, but I'm not quite there yet. So, I'm going to enter into another cycle of this amazing clinical trial that I'm on.

Now, my first reaction is disappointment. I started crying and I was so upset that I wasn't there yet...

Then, as I was thinking about it, I understood that the best way that this transplant was going to take, work and lead to my permanent healing is if I enter the transplant in the best condition possible. I needed to accept it. I was close, but not quite there yet.

I'm so deeply grateful that I'm going to go through another cycle. It's worked so amazingly well the first time, so I'm hoping that this is just what I need to get to remission and in a month I can go directly into the transplant.

Think about it this way -- if you are training for a race and have three races on your schedule, the first two are preparing you for the ultimate 'A' race. In the first race, you hope to have your best race ever. You're hoping to smash it and have it be amazing. You go, but it's not quite the race you hoped for. You're going to feel disappointed.

But the gift in this is -- what if you piqued in that race but you got overconfident and didn't do all the right things? Then when it came to the 'A' race, you weren't at your best.

Not being at your best for the first race of the season means you'll know exactly what you need to do. You'll need to work on this particular strategy or your mindset or your recovery. You'll find out all the things that are going to take you to the next level. By the time you get to that ultimate race, you are going to have the race of your life.

For me, I'm being given an opportunity to truly fine-tune my body and get it to the point where a month from now, even with the extra support and medicine I'm taking, I can put myself in an even better position to have a transplant that is really going to stick, and that will be what heals me.  I believe it with all my heart.

Yes, we can get really disappointed when things don't work out the way we hoped for, but someone very special in my life taught me that life is not a straight line. It never is. When we have what we believe are disappointments, let's look upon this as a gift or opportunity to gain something more that we need. That will lead us to be even better.

That's what I'm doing in this situation. That's what I'm hoping all of you do in any of the things where you fall even a little bit short of where you hoped to be. Recognize it as an opportunity for you to create something even more special than you could ever dream of in the future.

Have a great day, everybody.

For more tips and advice about living an authentic life go to https://www.sirilindley.com/authentic/