Throughout my life I have always been a negative person. Everything was always doom and gloom and woe is me. A life in negativity is no way to live and that all it will do is bring you down, make you miss opportunities, and overall greatly impede your ability to live your life to its greatest potential.

One of the ways my negativity hurt me the most was that I never wanted to do anything for I thought that it would be a waste of time since nothing good would come out of it anyway. I never tried applying for anything and I wasn't open to new experiences. For example, during the summer I never even considered applying for an internship or working because I thought that I wouldn't get anything out of it since it probably wouldn't even consider it as a career.

I also never saw the good in anything and went into every new situation thinking about only what could go wrong. This either had me avoiding new situations or totally dreading them in their entirety. Every single time that I would receive and assignment in school I would be reluctant to start it in fear that I would struggle on it, fail it, fail the class, and fail out of school. I always saw an assignment as the potential beginning of the end of my academic success.

My mom forced me to attend a different high school than my friends. I didn't feel very good about this because I have had many problems making friends in my life and in 8th grade I finally had a strong group of consistent friends but going to a different high school meant that this was going to be taken away from me temporarily. However, my pessimism made temporarily last much longer than it had to. I went into high school with the mindset that I wasn't going to make friends, be miserable, waste time, and be alone. My mindset became my reality. High school was everything that my pessimistic attitude told me it would be.

I also lack self confidence. I never realized how talented I am at certain things and how resilient I am and all of the challenges that I have tackled. I thought that my only skills and self-worth rested entirely in my academics. I never thought I would be writing articles and sharing them with my friends and family but I am. I never thought I'd make it this far in college but I made it this far and I'm doing well on top of it. I never thought I was so good at story telling until I articulated a funny life story to my orientation group. I also made myself think that the talents that I know I have would just disappear one day. I always looked at my next assignment as the start to my demise and I just wouldn't be able to get good grades any more.

My lack of self confidence also causes me to put myself down a lot. I do this mostly because other people who hear this put me up as a result. However, these down feelings I have towards myself are real. I don't put myself down because I want other people to say good things about me, I do it because I need them to say good things about me. I have used this as my only source of self confidence. Other people provided me with self confidence that I was unable to provide myself with due to my pessimism. Also the feeling I get when people say good things about me is great. My heart rate pounds, I blush, I smile, I feel good about myself, and I stand up straight and proudly for a few seconds. It is a great alternative to slouching and keeping my head down sheltering myself from the outside world.

I never took any risks either. I even viewed things that weren't risks as risks because I always saw the absolute worst case scenario in ever situation. If I overheard a conversation that I wanted to add to I wouldn't because I was afraid that I would embarrass myself or the group of people would be mean to me. I never wanted to sit with anybody because I thought that they would say "no" to me. I drove people away by ignoring them or running away when they went up to talk to me.

For a long time my life was the same sad cycle. Wake up and dread the day ahead, go to school where I would stress about my assignments, sit alone at lunch, count down the hours until the day's end and the days until the year's end, procrastinate on homework, watch youtube, prepare for the next day by thinking about what disappointments and stressors lie ahead, and finally go to sleep 3 hours later than I should.

Day after day I would complain about my life but I would never do anything to change it. I almost came to then conclusion that maybe I just like being unhappy. But that was false because when I am happy I enjoy it and I get so excited and I never stop talking about it and I crave being happy again. People love me when I am happy and I become a totally different person. That's why I have decided to start making changes.

In college I am seeing and feeling this confidence that I haven't had for most of my life. I introduced myself to so many people during orientation and I don't feel so afraid anymore. I have had meals with other people. I attend get real every Wednesday where I further articulate myself. Classes don't feel as stressful as they used to be. Each new assignment isn't the death of my academic career anymore and instead of avoiding them I start as soon as possible most of the times. I am stepping up to college's challenges and I feel stronger and stronger the more I go through. I would like to stop putting myself down but I love being reminded that people care about me and see so much good in me, it's such a great feeling but maybe I could receive it in some other way. I am enjoying life more and I still have a ways to go but things are definitely looking up.

Don't be a pessimist. Many people say that it will get you nowhere but it does get you somewhere. It takes you behind from where you started. You have to fight so much harder than you have to. Not only would you be going against the challenges, but you have to go against yourself too. When you are a pessimist you are your biggest enemy and challenge. But as an optimist you work with yourself and challenges become easier and they no longer seem like such a bad thing either. You end up seeing them as not only necessary, but helpful too for what would life be if everything came easy to us? We wouldn't enjoy anything if we didn't have to work hard for it, and it feels so much more worth it once you have achieved your goal.

It took my entire life but now I am finally realizing that my attitude only hurt me and that it ruined a big chunk of my childhood. I'm looking to use these experiences to help myself make better choices and think differently and enjoy life to the fullest and maybe I could help others do the same.