Today I slept through my alarm. I missed my only class for the day, I woke up to a messy kitchen from the night before and a washing machine that had stopped working mid-wash after I went to bed, leaving my clothes soaking for hours in a big tub of soapy water. I had to rinse and wring out my clothes, do the dishes, organize the chaos that was my refrigerator and clean my room all before I could shower and get ready to do on-camera interviews for a video package due at midnight.

To be honest, I was immediately in a grumpy mood when I realized all that I had to accomplish before I could even technically start my day. I was complaining internally about the chores I had to do, dragging my feet from one task to the next.

It took all of two minutes for me to be reminded how happy I should be.

I slept through my alarm because I had been out late with work friends, having a total blast supporting one of our own. I missed a class, but I also caught up on sleep I had needed for way too long. I woke up to a messy kitchen because of the cook-out I had the day before, with good food and even better friends. I'm still trying to find the silver lining in a broken washer... ut you get the picture.

How often do we focus on the negativity so intensely we forget to see the big picture? For me, it's easy to get irritated by things that don't really matter. It's too easy to mark a perfectly good day off as "one of those days" because a few things didn't go the way I wanted them to that morning. We're so quick to let a messy kitchen, an ignored phone call or a broken stoplight on the way to work completely off-set our day.

The truth of the matter is, being happy takes work. It's easier to decide to be miserable than it is to remind yourself why you shouldn't be. When something goes wrong, it's usually our instinct to let that ruin our attitudes and determine the direction for the rest of our day. People talk about happiness like it's effortless and easy to come by, but that's the last thing it is.

Happiness is a decision you have to make every second of every day, it's something you have to work for and maintain. It's choosing to see the positive side in things you'd rather count off as an inconvenience. It's taking the never-ending traffic on your way to work as extra time to memorize the words to that new song. It's making a dance party for one out of cleaning your kitchen. It's laughing at your bad luck and smiling at a random person on the street because they look like they could use it.

So no, it's not easy to be happy when the world is telling you you shouldn't be. But I can promise you one thing: it's definitely worth it.