It's hard to be optimistic in times of trouble!

How do you define trouble? Pretty much anything from a mild inconvenience to your life falling to pieces.

I'll be turning 20 this year, and I can say with confidence, that 2019 has already been one of the most confusing years of my life. So many things have changed within the past couple of months that I feel as if the rug has been pulled out from underneath me, entirely.

I'm sure I'm not the only person who feels this way. There are so many things that can change in the blink of an eye, and we're forced to deal with change the best way we can. Whether that's getting fired from your job, losing a loved one, going through a horrible breakup, you name it.

What's even harder to deal with is the number of people that tell you EVERYTHING WILL BE OKAY. You hope everything will be okay, and you know everything will be okay, but in the meantime, you're not sure how to actually BE okay.

And that's okay.

The thing is, life is constantly changing and as a result, we are constantly changing. There's not a moment in our life where there are absolutely no issues whatsoever. We're like books! Without an issue presented, what is our story about? It'd be a pretty boring book without some sort of conflict resolution.

From chapter to chapter, there's new issues presented, or new elements presented of some sort of ongoing issue. This is like our lives, printed on pages of paper and bound together. We just don't sit and think about it like that, though.

But think — the problem in chapter one is not always a problem in chapter ten. Somewhere between all those pages and chapters, that issue fades and fades until it's either so faint in the background it doesn't matter anymore, or it's completely gone.

We read our book so fast, it seems like hardly any time has passed between chapter one and chapter ten. Life isn't always like this — sometimes it drags incredibly slow, it feels like forever. However, one thing remains the same — no matter what pace we read at, we do get to chapter ten. No matter how slow life drags out, we will get to our next chapter.

In the meantime, we have to remain positive! Taking your life one day at a time also means reading the book of your soul one page at a time. While that process might be a little painstakingly slow, it also gives us time to read every word with detail and feel every emotion that our book presents to us.

So a little advice? Take your life one page at a time. Allow yourself to feel every emotion, and to go through the process of coping with stress, anxiety, grief, etc.

And when you're done with that page, move onto the next, and don't look back. Progress into chapter 10.