“You just seem super happy lately.”
Recently, one of my friends said this to me during a conversation about how school was going this fall. According to her, I looked different from how I was last year. I was smiling more; goofing off in photos; and just looked really cheerful all the time.
Weirdly enough, I doubted what she said was true; but, as I scrolled through my own photos on Facebook later, I wondered if she was right.
Was I happy? Considering how last year went, I was unsure what possibly could have done to change that. I sat there in my bed, staring at pictures of me with smiles on my face, and tried to figure out the answer. Eventually, it came to me as I thought back to what I thought was the worst advice of my life.
My sophomore year of college was possibly the worst year I have had in a long time. I got my heart broken; I was unhappy with my appearance; I was working too much, which meant I wasn’t doing well in school. I was absolutely miserable most of the time.
I was in a bad place, and it seemed to me like I would never get out of this mindset because bad things just seemed to keep happening. Every time I felt close to being okay, something would happen and I would fall apart again. I wanted to get back to happy, or at least something close to it, but I was not sure how to start.
I went to my closest guy friend a lot during this period in my life. He was the one person I thought would always be Usually he didn’t say much, preferring instead to just let me vent about how horrible everything was, and how I did not understand why everything was happening to me. Then, he said one thing I will never forget, because it was possibly the worst advice I have ever gotten.
“You just need to get over it.” He said.
When someone is in a bad place, this advice is usually the last thing you want to say to them. It is insensitive and may make the person think you do not actually care about their problems; however, in this case it was different. I was this close to flipping out on my friend when he said “Let me finish!”
My friend went on to explain that the reason I was so miserable was because I kept letting everything set me back; and, instead of focusing on the bad in my life, I needed to start looking for the good. “Even if it’s only one thing a day”, he said, “Write it down and before you know it you’ll have a list of great things that are happening to you. There is good stuff in the world, but some days you have to look for it.”
I still doubted this advice, convinced that one good thing a day would not pull me out of the darkness. However, the next time I felt like falling apart over something that had happened I took a deep breath and tried to remember that one good thing that happened. It wasn’t easy, but I remembered that I was able to get a spicy tuna bowl before they sold out today, and that I was done with my paper finally. Little things, nothing ginormous, but I still felt better.
So I started trying to keep track of the good things in my day, listing them off in my head every chance I got, and remembering new people and moments to be happy about every day. The list kept growing and growing and growing until I realized how many things in my life were positive. Don’t get me wrong, I still had bad days, but remembering the good stuff made those days a little bit easier. It wasn’t an overnight cure, but it helped.
As I sat there, scrolling through my Facebook, I reached my sophomore year and saw the difference between who I was then versus who I am now. My smile seemed more genuine a year later and my posture more confident.
I looked happy this year, and I think I actually am (or at least closer to it then I was last year).
Maybe that one good thing a day isn’t the key to happiness, and I’ve mistitled this article; however, all I know is that if I’m ever having a bad day, my first step is now always to think about how lucky I am to have all these wonderful things in my life, and it makes the bad days a little more bearable.
