It's a Wonderful Life

There is a recurring pattern that keeps happening throughout my life. It goes like this: I feel depressed with certain aspects of my life, so I have a resolve to change. Then, I set goals that are realistic and can bring about this change. Next, I start applying these goals in my life and am able to get through a few days successfully with these goals in mind. But, disaster strikes. I have an experience that really causes me to break down or I have a really bad day and I’m so distressed that I simply abandon my goals and go back to my old way of living.

This past week, I made several goals over the weekend to improve my life. I felt fairly successful in keeping these goals all the way up until Thursday, which was my typical break down day. When the day was starting to turn bad, I remembered that this had happened countless times before, and I just need to get through it positively and not let it crush me. During that day, I got a bunch of unusually negative comments from my writing group about my story, I studied all day for a big test and, after I took it, I discovered that I got a bad grade, I got picked apart in my writing group, mostly from the teacher himself, and then on more minor notes, I spilled a whole soda in my car, and spilled ketchup all over my room days before our cleaning check.

But, I knew that I could not let these experiences tear me down and stop me in sticking to my goals. So, I kept a positive attitude throughout the day, and even started to laugh when a new negative thing happened. Because of this attitude, things started to go a lot better. I was able to easily clean those messes, I learned that many of the negative comments made on my story from my writing group were actually helpful and would help me write a better book, and I learned the next day, that there was a huge curve on the grades of the test I took and I did 20% better than I thought.

I learned from this that attitude is very important. Keeping a positive attitude throughout these negative experiences helped me to not get overwhelmed by them. I was able to tell that they were not really that big of a deal, and that I could push through them. I am happy to say that I am now still on track with my goals and have had several great days since. I love life and appreciate all the small pleasures that it offers. I have a great family, great friends, a great church, great opportunities, and great music. I am really privileged to have my life, and I wouldn’t trade it for anything. That is why I’m going to stick to my goals no matter how difficult life gets, so that I can improve and make the most out of this wonderful life I’ve been given.