Approximately one year ago, I wasn’t in the best frame of mind. Things were moving too fast around me, a lot of changes happened in my life during a few days, and I just mentally wasn’t in the building at the beginning of my spring semester. I hated how I felt, and I wanted things to change.

Luckily, things did change. I remember one day when I was sitting in my room, and someone from my floor who I didn’t really talk to stopped by and gave me this really nice cookie “just because.” This made me really happy, and it spawned some thought about past events that made me equally as happy. I then got the idea to keep a journal of these happy things on my phone, so I could cherish them forever. The basic rules I had for myself was that I was to write down at least one nice thing someone did that made me happy, and a way that I made someone’s day. This way, as cheesy as it sounds, I knew kindness and love were being spread throughout my community, and this is something that never fails to make me happy today.

What I wrote in my journal for each day varied on the kind of day I was having. Some of the highlights for things that made me happy ranged from small like someone complimenting an outfit or spending time with a friend, to grand things like getting my CF position, or when friends surprised me in unexpected ways. I’ve done this every day since February of 2017, and boy have I learned a lot about myself. It started out small, with maybe a couple sentences of text a day, but as time went on, those sentences turned into paragraphs and beyond. I am really happy that I took on this challenge, as I was able to do a lot of self-reflection and learn a lot about myself each night I wrote on my phone.

First, being able to help someone out in any way is always a way to boost my spirits.

Whether it just be letting someone know I appreciate them, or giving a struggling friend a piece of candy, seeing their happy reaction made me just as happy. I noticed that on the days that seemed really bad at the beginning, I completed more of these random acts of kindness, and my day always turned into a really good day from there. My goal was to never let myself go to bed in a bad mood, and this worked.

I also learned how to find joy in the smallest of things, and this overall has improved my views on life. I started to pay attention more to people’s interactions with me, their body language, and how really just a positively charged conversation can bring up any sour mood I was in. As time went on, I started to find more happy occurrences during my day to write about, almost too many to write down. This helped me to even start finding the positives in the negatives, like how I wouldn’t have formed a crucial friendship if I didn’t have that one really bad day earlier this semester.

I also just learned more about my personality in general and what makes me happy. For instance, I figured out that my love language is words of affirmation before I even took the test online. Having someone compliment me or reassure me that I am doing the right thing is a sure fire way to get to my heart. I also learned that I am more of an extroverted introvert than I thought. I still am introverted, and I like my alone time and hate big crowds, but I also need to have some sort of social interaction to stay happy.

Spending time with really awesome people always ended up as highlights of my day as well.

Lastly, and most importantly, I learned that I am in control of my own happiness. No matter what kind of a day I had, I always found something to be happy about. Life happens, crap happens, but as long as you find that one thing to be happy about- that really yummy dinner, how pleasant the weather was, how kind that stranger acted towards you - you can conquer the entire world. Negativity can never get you down.