You may not see it that way, but the negative experiences of your life have probably taught you more, influenced the core of your personality, and made you grow more than the positive ones.
There are plenty of ways in which people get simply harmed with no "benefit", or even crushed. By definition we only ever talk with those who survive in some way, and I think it's best to leave it up to a person to decide how they feel about bad things in their life, and what it did or didn't do for them. If you suffered through horrible things and grew from it with no permanent damage, that's great (no sarcasm intended), but please don't assume that's how it goes for everybody.
It depends on how negative they are. Deployed to Afghanistan, is the PTSD worth it? Abused or neglected as a child, is the stunted development worth it? I don't think so.
Honestly I don't think you can sugar-coat negative experiences.
I suppose I do sometimes think about how much better my current job is than my previous one, but I'm not sure I see a universal silver lining for every negative experience.
It may be true that I learned various things from the time mom was violently murdered, but I've never once woken up and thought about how glad I am that today isn't as horrible as the day her corpse was discovered in our basement. Nor can I easily believe that the resulting years of depression added anything worthwhile to my enjoyment of life.
