Like every other person in the world, I find that I can sometimes get into ruts where all I can think about are the negative things happening in my life and in the lives of those around me. I have found that life presents many opportunities for discouragement and disappointment. Some days, it is hard to be happy. However, at the start of this year, I decided that something needed to change. I decided to fiercely pursue happiness every day of my life.

Webster’s Dictionary defines the word pursue as the following: “To follow in order to overtake, capture, kill, or defeat.” Realize the word pursue is a verb. It requires action, and not a passive action. You cannot wait for happiness to come stumbling along your path. You have to make a conscious effort every day to fiercely find and overtake happiness.

How have I tried to do this? I bought a journal, and everyday since January 1, I have faithfully written down things that have made me happy during the day. I did make some rules for myself because I did not want the journal itself to become something that makes me unhappy. The first is that I have limited myself to only using bullet point responses that more often than not are not complete sentences and do not have grammatical punctuation. Second, the things that I write must be relative to that specific day. This keeps me from being generic with my answers and forces me to really think about things that happened that day. Finally, I am allowing myself to write super sappy and cliché things that make me happy (because honestly, who doesn’t love the smell of coffee on a gloomy day?).

As I continue to write more and more, I notice that some days I have many things to write about and others it is a struggle to even put the pen on the paper. But everyday, I have managed to be happy or thankful about something in my life regardless of how I feel. When I started my journal, I made a conscious choice to write in it only at the end of the day right before I get into bed. This allows me to consistently end my day feeling happy, and I have noticed that it makes a difference in my life. I have found that I start the mornings in better moods and that every day I am constantly looking for things to be happy about that I can write down to remember.

Here are some of the things that I have written:

• Sunday church as the start of the New Year
• Getting into clean bed sheets after a hot shower
• The harmony in the song “Because” by The Beatles
• The syllabus days are considered official school holidays by some professors
• Sock buns and wearing glasses
• Shamrock Shakes
• Breakfast for lunch

In Matthew 6:27, Jesus says, “And who of you by worrying and being anxious can add one unit of measure (cubit) to his stature or to the span of his life?”. There is no need to focus on what is going wrong because “if God is for us, who can be against us?” (Romans 8:31). Instead, choose to pursue happiness every single day. It will change your life.