You live one life. Would you rather live every day being happy and positive or angry and negative?

If you want to be happy, you have to be happy on purpose. When you wake up, you can’t just wait to see what kind of day you’ll have. You have to decide what kind of day you’ll have. The only person that should be making that choice is YOU!

Do me a favor. Think back to a time in your life when it felt like you were at rock bottom- whether it was a few hours, a day, a week, a month, or a year ago. Now that you have that time in your head, answer me this: Are you okay today? Are you better than you were at that time? How did you get through that crucial time? These might not be easy questions to answer, but they are definitely answerable even if you don’t know how to put those feelings into words. Something somehow got you to where you are today.

Each and every day that I wake up, the first thing that comes to my mind is this: I am grateful that I woke up this morning. Being grateful that you woke up is the number one reason anyone should be happy with his or her life. As I lay in bed preparing myself to get up and start my day, I try to think of all the things that make me happy in life. After that, I ask myself, “How am I going to make today a good day?” Before I answer that, I tell myself that it is going to be a great day no matter what difficulties I face. I then start my day with a positive attitude so that I don’t allow anything to bring me down all day.

If my day goes by and I hear news I don’t like, for example, I find out I failed a test, or someone said or did something that irritated me—I still try to keep a smile on my face. I’m the kind of person who tries to find light even in the darkest places. I rarely let negativity bring me down and neither should you! Life is way too short to dwell on negativity. You get ONE life to live, so live every day with a smile on your face because every second you waste not smiling, is a second you will never get back again!

As I faced more obstacles growing up—high school, college, relationships, friendships, family issues—I learned a few things:

Keep a positive attitude no matter what life throws at you

By keeping a positive attitude no matter what, it allows you to cope with the hardships that come your way a little better. If you are determined to keep a smile on your face, it will be harder for something to make that smile go away if you have positive attitude.

Things can always be worse

Did you ever sit there and think about your problem and then think about how many people actually have it worse? When you do that, your problem doesn’t even seem like it should be a problem anymore. I’m not trying to say that your problem doesn’t matter and I’m also not trying to say that your problem should be looked past because other people have it worse. I’m simply just stating, before you look too much into something and stress over it, analyze how bad the situation really is and if you should let it affect you.

The time you spend unhappy is time that you will never see again

They say that every minute you spend unhappy is 60 seconds that you will NEVER get back. This is 110% true as a matter of fact. If you spend more time being negative than positive, you are just wasting precious moments of life that could have been spent happy. Don’t allow yourself to waste your life away being unhappy. Sure, things do come up once in a while and it’s okay to feel the way you do sometimes when those things happen…but open your eyes and see the bigger picture: we have ONE life we get to live. Spend it the right way…happy.

With the bad comes the good

When something bad happens in our lives, they say something good always comes along after it. People who are convinced that only bad things happen to them might disagree with me. In their mind, nothing good ever happens to them or they simply think everyone is “out to get them”. What do I exactly mean by that? Well, negative people focus on the negative aspects in life and they believe that no matter what problems they face, who they come across, or what things happen to them, someone is always behind it. When you think positive in this aspect, you believe that something good will happen after that one bad thing.

If I have any piece of advice to give, it’s this: do what makes YOU happy. Live your life with a positive outlook and wake up every morning with a smile on your face because you should be grateful that you have another day on this earth. Never sweat the small stuff, because, in reality, the small stuff might not matter in a few hours, days, weeks, months, or years from now. No matter what happens, always try to keep a positive attitude and even if something bad happens, try to see the good in it.

There’s always a light at the end of the tunnel, remember that.

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