Bitterness is an extremely hard thing to avoid. It's almost as if being bitter is always the answer when something doesn't go according to planned. It seems to be the very first emotion that comes to our minds when something bad happens, or something does not work out the way we planned. Whether it's the friend that stabbed you in the back, or the boyfriend that left you high and dry, it's so easy to let the resentment you feel make you lose sight of being better. Instead of taking the hurt and dissappointment we feel from these misfortunes in our life and using them to strengthen our own character, we instead turn on that angry Beyonce song about being irreplaceable and let bitterness take over our bodies.

What exactly does being bitter even do to us? Bitterness takes your heart and makes it so hard that you can't let anyone in. Bitterness is an evil little guy that steals your joy and replaces it with a coldness that engulfs you. Bitterness makes you resentful, bitterness makes you hate and bitterness is poisonous to a happy life because it will rob you of any chance to be happy. Why? Well, because if you're bitter and angry towards the past, you won't be able to see all the good things that lie ahead of you. You'll never be able to be fully happy if you're still bitter over the boy that broke your heart, or that one time your friend talked about you behind your back. You have already lost precious time in your life to this thing that happened that caused you to be bitter in the first place. Do not waste anymore time and missing anymore opportunities because you are stuck in the past! Truth is, being bitter only causes YOU to suffer, not the ones you are bitter towards.

I have learned that instead of letting bitterness take over your soul, you have to allow yourself to become better. You control the kind of person you are, the way you react to things and the way you let other people's actions affect you. At the end of the day, the only person you can control is yourself, so worry about you, fix you, do you, make you better, find your own happiness and only focus on you. Maybe it's a selfish mindset but maybe it will save you from being the most hard hearted person that you know. Life is too short to be filled with so much anger that you can no longer enjoy the simple things like the sunrise, two people getting engaged, an ice cream cone full of colorful sprinkles or Dunkin Donuts blueberry cake donuts. (If those donuts don't make your heart a little less hard by eating them... Then bye).

There is too much beauty in the world to be hard. So go out and fall in love with yourself again. Find something you love and give it your all. Sing in the shower again. Laugh until you have tears flowing down your face. Trust that God's plan is better and bigger than your own plan. Enjoy this life, this one life you have, and enjoy it to the fullest. Don't get mad. Don't get even. Do better. Much better. Rise above. Become so engulfed in your own success that you forget all the bad that has happened.

It will save your mind, your heart, and even more importantly, it will save you.