2016 has been the year of many things. The Cubs won their first world series since 1908. Leonardo DiCaprio won his first Oscar, ever. The world got to meet the happiest Chewbacca fan. Females finally had a running chance in making a difference by Hilary Clinton making it to Election Day. These are all equally amazing things. However, now that 2016 is ending and 2017 is literally knocking on the door, everyone is focusing on the bad things that happened.

Harambe was killed in the Cincinnati zoo. If you need a refresher, a toddler climbed through several obstacles and got into the gorilla’s exhibit . The gorilla acted as if he needed to protect the child, yet many others claimed that Harambe threw the child against the wall. To each their own, but a sad life was lost because a child wasn’t watched close enough. On the other end of the spectrum, a child was killed by an alligator in Florida. This happened right outside of Disney, where dreams come true. In the park’s defense, there was a sign that said no swimming.

These were not the only deaths 2016 welcomed. Christina Grimmie , David Bowie, Alan Rickman, Gene Wilder, Prince and Carrie Fisher are just a few celebrities that come to mind. While it is extremely sad that the world must go into 2017 without the magic that every one of the individuals offered in their own way, there were more than just deaths of celebrities. There were twenty-three plane crashes, one of which still hasn’t been recovered. There have been 2467 Islamic attacks in 61 countries, over 21,000 people killed and over 26,000 injured, and that is just attacks that have been reported.

When reflecting back on the past year, and every year before it, we tend to gravitate to the negative things. I listed a few positive things in the beginning, but as anyone can notice, those things were very obviously outweighed by all of the negative things. It’s funny how life works like that. We can do nine out of ten things right, and all we can think about is the one thing we did wrong. Why do we do that?

I’m challenging you to do something different in 2017. I challenge you to focus on the positive things. Find a way to keep track of these positive things. That way when 2017 ends, you can compare your list of positives to the list of negatives. You’ll have at least 365 positive things to compare to the never ending list that the media, both personal social media sites and the news alike tend to put into focus.

Let’s make 2017 a different year. Let’s change how the game is played. I believe that Freeform’s television show, The Fosters, basically nailed it when Rosie O’Donnell’s character says that “if you continue figuring out all the ways that the world has screwed you, that’s all you’ll see”. I hope to stick to trying to find the positives. My plan is to write down one positive thing a day and placing it in a mason jar so one year from now I can take them out and see that in reality, life isn’t that bad.