In this world, there are not a lot of great things. There's stress, anxiety, depression, poverty, inequality, unhappiness, oppression. If you really wanted to, you could easily look up at the sky, think about all the things that kind of suck in the world, and become a cynic.

Take it from experience.

But what I've managed to learn is that a pessimistic approach to life just isn't useful. It's unproductive. It's inefficient.

A pessimistic approach to life is a waste of time because you spend so much energy thinking about all bad things that are probably going to happen, that you don't leave yourself with the time to make the good things happen. That's why Eeyore was so slow and lethargic all the time, guys. He was always too sad and cynical to move any faster.

With the light of a thousand suns pouring into my brain in utter enlightenment, I decided to be happy.

Nah, it was more like, I was sulking over a pint of ice cream alone in my bed watching Friends reruns, when I realized I was fed up with my own god damn attitude, and I decided to stop feeling sorry for myself all the time.

Let me tell you, it's an incredibly active effort to be happy. When a sad thought floats its way into your mind, you have to stand determined and pull a Gandalf, YOU SHALL NOT PASS. And then, you remind yourself of good things and you make plans of actions to get things done.

An example: My door broke and I was locked out, and I didn't know when I would get back in. They fixed it and let me back in my room, but it was still broken and I would probably find myself locked out again at some point during the week.

Anyone who knows me knows my usual reaction would be to panic. Call my dad and/or brother at least 3 or 4 times asking for what I should do. Pace back and forth across my room. Shove everything I would ever possibly need, plus a few things, into my backpack before I left the room for the day. All while feeling the generic heat of nauseating anxiety coursing through my veins.

Luckily for me, I had already made my happy decision by then, which meant I wasn't allowed to get worked up over it. So, I panicked for about 0.2 seconds, long enough for my brain to come up with the worse case scenario so I could think about how to start preparing for it and coming up with my plan of action.

I'll leave it up to you to handle yourself on a case-by-case basis. My one piece of advice will be to recognize that if the sky isn't actually falling, please try not to raise holy-hell in your mind that it is every time something goes wrong.

But in terms of general happiness, I've been inspired by a play by Duncan Macmillan that I watched at the beginning of the year to look at the little things. Find your happiness in all of the smallest of things, in Every Brilliant Thing. In this play, Duncan made a list of all the best things that he'd seen or come across in his life. All the little things that filled him with a feel-good fuzzy feeling inside.

For your intense reading pleasure, here are a few of my brilliant things:

1. Dogs
2. Holding the door open for someone and hearing them say thank you
3. Someone holding the door open for you
4. A smile from a stranger
5. When a car stops to let you cross the road
6. When you wave at the car and they wave back
7. The sound of high heels on pavement
8. When your high heels don't rip up your feet
9. Plays
10. Ann Arbor squirrels
11. Banana Pancakes by jack johnson
12. Not capitalizing people's names
13. Having a full Calender
14. Having full battery
15. When my friends call me rebo
16. When my friends call me riy
17. When you sit next to a friendly person in lecture
18. Stickers!
19. Learning the entomology of a new word
20. Using "entomology" properly
21. Laughing with your friends
22. Saying/doing stupid shit and having other people do it back to you
23. Seeing your crush's smile
24. Learning your crush's laugh
25. Feeling safe with a group of people
26. Bonding over TV shows
27. Backpacks
28. Discovering new arm muscle
29. Making eye contact and it not being awkward
30. Blowing off homework to hang out with friends
31. Spontaneous plans to hang out with friends actually working
32. Planned plans to hang out with friends actually working
33. The song Lucky from the Ohio ad because it feels like happiness
34. When you think he's staring at you from across the room, even though he's probably not
35. When you have a good hair day
36. When you think you have a good hair day, even when it's not
37. Taking your bra off at night
38. Being able to fart as loud as you want because no one's around
39. When Apple releases an iOS update
40. Finding the right words to say something you've been wanting to say for a while
41. Finishing an odyssey article quicker than you expected to
42. Meeting up with old friends and feeling like you can pick up where you left off
43. Hearing someone speaking Hindi and instantly looking up because it's like a call, and then remembering what Kreinbring said about that kind of thing
44. Remembering random Kreinbring-isms
45. When it's unexpectedly warmer out
46. Walking into air conditioning when it's too hot out
47. Falling asleep on top of your homework because that's the best sleep you'll probably get whilst a student
48. Knowing your way around a new city
49. Feeling better after crying
50. You are my sunshine
51. The sun setting behind Palmer Commons
52. The way mojo looks at night through my window
53. Chocolate milk
54. Sharing chocolate with your best friends
55. Learning about new music from friends
56. Listening to someone talk about how much they love something
57. Ravi Shankar’s sitar
58. The song Ragas in Minor Scale
59. The song Location
60. Wearing flannels
61. The first snow of the season
62. The word “cookbook”
63. My GSI, Elird’s hair
64. The law library
65. iMessage on Mac
66. Chipotle
67. Learning about Tagore’s poetry
68. Shreya Ghoshal's voice
69. Getting paid
70. Heartbeats, because you know you're alive

It would be really fun if we added to this list. Go on, add as many as you can think of!