We live in a fairly pessimistic world, don’t we? We enjoy focusing on the bad things. We look at the news and see shootings and bombings and war, but never the good stories that you know have to be out there… they do, don’t they? There is good, isn’t there? Sometimes it’s hard to remember. Sometimes it’s hard to see.

I used to be probably one of the most pessimistic people you’d ever meet, but I was a sneaky pessimist. I was quiet and shy, and so most people probably didn’t even notice my poor attitude – I hardly spoke enough for people to hear it – but when I did speak, I think it was pretty obvious. I pointed out the flaw in every plan, the bad in every snippet of good. I dwelled on what went wrong in a day instead of what went right, and because of that I eventually started to just assume the worst of everything. People were bound to disappoint me. Our plans would no doubt get cancelled. Even if they didn’t, I’d have a horrible time – better to just not bother.

I looked at every situation and thought to myself: what could go wrong? And then I believed those things would happen. I was pessimism at its finest. And that’s because I wasn’t fine.

I was sad. Depressed, to some extent. I didn’t like myself, and I didn’t think other people liked me that much. At first I could blame it on my angsty teenage years – does the world really expect more of me than this? – but eventually I went to college and that pessimism came along with me. It was a weight I didn’t even realize I was carrying. It was baggage I didn’t see handcuffed to my wrist, dragging behind me as I walked. Have you ever held a weight that heavy on your heart? It sucks, let me tell you. And I was totally blind to it. Miserable and blind.

Luckily, I had a friend in college who straightened me out. No one had ever looked at me and told me the truth about my crappy attitude, but she did. In the nicest way, of course, because she’s too kind to be blunt, but the message got across all the same. I was mopey and sad and struggling with so much in my life, and she told me it was all in my outlook. Change my outlook, change my attitude, and just maybe I could change the direction of my life.

She was right. I wasn’t keen on admitting that at first, but she was. Optimism is really important. It’s so easy to be angry at ourselves or others, to hate ourselves or others, to expect the worst because then you don’t have the chance to be disappointed. But really, we end up disappointed anyway. We blame ourselves, and that self-hatred grows just a little more every day. Suddenly even the good things are tainted by that seeping gray pessimism. And that’s just no way to live a life.

This friend of mine, she challenged me to write down one good thing every day. And for some reason, I did (maybe even I could see that I was going down a dangerous, dark path at that point). The good things started out pretty simple – I got to finish a series on Netflix, they had enchiladas at lunch, class got cancelled. Then slowly (oh so slowly), they became bigger. I started to list more of them. Suddenly I wasn’t thinking of the bad, but the good, and that’s what I was remembering every day. When I started I had to rack my brain for something I could call halfway decent in my day, but by the end it was second nature.

A lot happened with that mindset change. I started to like myself more. I started to eat healthier and take care of myself. I started to be kinder to my friends, and stopped making negative offhand comments about how everything would go wrong (for the most part, at least).

And sometimes I’m still pessimistic. Especially when I’m having a really bad day or week. But for the most part I’ve come to realize that while losing hope is perhaps the easiest thing to do, it’s so hard to stay hopeless. It’s too sad there, too dark and miserable. I like to say that I still visit every once in a while, but it isn’t my place of residence anymore (and I thank God every day for that).

So from one rehabilitated to pessimist to the next, I have to be honest with you – optimism is a lot more fun. Bad things are going to come at you in life, but if you keep a positive outlook, you’re going to get through it just fine. But if you keep clinging to your pessimism like it’s the only thing you can trust, you’re going to sink. Fast. So try to give it up. Try to find one good thing every day. It just might make the difference.