Nikki Bella is finding ways to work around WWE creative decisions she can’t control, but she’s not pretending she was immediately cool with everything that happened.
While speaking on The Nikki & Brie Show, Nikki revealed that it took her “a few days to cool off” over her recent creative frustrations before she reached the point where she could start figuring out how to turn the situation into something useful.
The subject came up when Brie shared a Maya Angelou quote — “I can be changed by what happens to me, but I refuse to be reduced by it” — and immediately connected it to what Nikki has been dealing with in WWE.
Brie specifically pointed back to Nikki’s willingness to keep her story going online if material doesn’t make SmackDown.
“And you know, I feel like you and I, both things we’re going through right now, like, you know, with your creative at WWE, I loved how earlier you were just like, you know what, like, doesn’t make SmackDown again this week, then I’m gonna make it one hell of a story online.”
“And I think that’s great. It’s like things can happen to us. Yeah. Things can change. Gosh, we in our careers, you know, things change hourly. And I love how she says, ‘But I refuse to be reduced by it.’ And I think that’s so important. And you have a great attitude.”
Nikki agreed, but there was one pretty important distinction: getting to that attitude took some time. Then Nikki revealed just how long it took her to get past whatever had been bothering her.
“It’s crazy ’cause it’s not like, you know, you instantly are just gonna refuse to be reduced by it. You know, things, when things happen to you, they take time to process. Took me a few days to cool off and be like, you know what? This is, this is actually how I’m gonna make it work.”
Instead of staying angry about something she couldn’t change, Nikki eventually decided she had two options: let it drag her somewhere negative or figure out how to make something positive out of it.
“’Cause as, as we know, we could live life two ways. We can let things bother us and make us worse or, you know, shift our emotions in a negative way or take us down a dark path, or we can refuse to be reduced by it. Right. Just like Maya says.”
“And sometimes those take a few days to process and they’re like, this is how I’m gonna make it positive. Right. This is how I’m gonna make it better for me.”
That mindset has taken on more importance for Nikki because she says stress has started showing up somewhere considerably more serious: her blood work.
Nikki said most of her recent results looked great, but one area connected to her heart concerned her. She attributed the result to her stress levels and said it placed her in what she described as a higher-risk area for heart disease.
“And one thing that I’ve learned so much, just even getting my blood work back again, because you and I always stay so consistent with that. It was crazy to see all my levels be great except for one.”
“And that was around my heart and that was causes stress. And it’s so bad to where I put myself in like, um, an area of like high risk of heart disease because of how high stress I have.”
That got Nikki looking at what was actually causing the stress and separating the things she can change from the things she simply can’t.
“And that’s when I just really had to be like, what are the things that are really stressing me out and how can I control this or let go?”
Some of that comes from normal life, including parenting, back-to-school concerns and finding the right school for her son. But when Nikki applied the same thinking to WWE, she landed on a pretty simple reality.
She can pitch. She can bring ideas. She can fight for what she wants. She cannot decide what WWE ultimately puts on television.
“But then it’s also when I look at my career, what, what can I control and what can I not control? Right. I can’t control when something gets cut. I can’t control the overall creative. I, I can pitch and do all that.”
What Nikki believes she can control is everything that comes afterward. If WWE cuts something she wanted on SmackDown, she can’t magically put it back on television, but she can decide whether that kills her momentum or becomes the starting point for something else. That could mean taking the story online, finding another creative angle or turning the frustration itself into something entertaining enough that she still gets something out of it.
“But what I realize is what I can control is when things happen, how do I make it something for sure. And how can I make it something great and interesting.”
“And also that feeds my soul of like, you know what, that’s, that’s really entertaining and I like it this way and I’m gonna be okay with it because it’s just not worth letting things affect you negatively.”
“You already get affected. So why do we wanna make it worse?”
That also puts Nikki’s earlier comments about potentially taking her Paige storyline online into a different light. She isn’t saying getting cut doesn’t bother her. Apparently, it bothered her enough that she needed a few days to cool off. Now she’s trying to make sure WWE deciding what reaches television doesn’t also get to decide what she does next.
What do you make of Nikki Bella admitting she needed a few days to cool off over her WWE creative situation? Let us know in the comments.
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