It is commonly said that the mind is a powerful machine, and I never understood the meaning of that until I finished my freshman year of college.

Every college student, male or female, faces their own demons and struggles, and mine happened to be lurking throughout the entire college process. It started when I was rejected from my first college of choice when I blamed myself for everything I clearly did wrong over the years to receive that rejection, and ended the first day of my orientation.

As the summer was zipping by and college was rapidly approaching, I talked myself through the doubts I was having about where I would be spending the next four years. I made the decision that being negative and expecting the worst would only make my college experience miserable, which is something I knew I would live to regret.

I started orientation with an open mind, and everything else fell into place. I opened my eyes to the blessings in front of me and in turn fell in love with the campus, my classes, my friends and my future.

My biggest critic is myself in terms of everything from my self-image to my career choice to my relationships. I find that my mind is always quick to find the negatives in every situation, and that is something I have been working to change. Living in fear and negativity is not the way I hope to live my life.

So the question is, how do I work to change that? I set goals. More importantly, I hold myself accountable. When I find myself quickly bouncing to the negative thoughts and irrational fears when my emotions are triggered, I try to talk myself down from making rash assumptions, but that doesn’t come without its challenges.

It took me a while to realize that the only person that can hold me back is myself, and the more I talked down to myself the more I would hold me back in bettering myself and reaching the goals I set.

I am not saying that I never have negative thoughts anymore, because I would simply be lying. I believe negative thinking is something I will always struggle with, but acknowledging that and setting goals to work towards a more positive and healthy way of thinking can help me stray from my bad habits.

I never realized how crucial positive thinking was until I reflected upon my first year of college and acknowledged how much I have grown as a person in every essence of who I am and who I aim to be.