Some days you start off good and they take a bad turn; others are just bad all the way through...my favorite (other than those rare few that are good all the way through) are those kind of days that start off terribly and take a turn for the better!
Today was one of those days. As I wrote in a document I titled bad day thoughts, "I started off my day SO GRUMPY. I was really frustrated with my life and how things weren't turning out the way I wanted them to, and yet I felt like I was upset about stupid things." [For the interested reader, I will specify that stupid things refers to my own struggles with turning guys down and feeling stressed out about looming deadlines on midterms, scholarships, and job applications.]
But remember, happy ending? So while I'm laying there in bed, moping about my life and wishing I could stay at home watching chick flicks all day and imagining my life being that perfect and uncomplicated, I make the first decision that helps me to recover my happiness: I get up.
I read once that the opposite of depression is not happiness - it's activity (I read it on the internet, therefore it's true). I sure love to do nothing when I'm feeling sad about myself. But on days like today when I had tons of homework to do, class to attend, and a midterm to take, idle self-pity was not an option. I forced myself to get out of bed, and grabbed the first clothes I could find to head off to class. (You guys, I didn't even put the normal 5 minutes of fixing my hair/picking out cute clothes worth of effort that I normally do in the morning...it was legit a bad day). I was late, but so ticked off at life that it didn't even bug me.
Step two. I'm struggling to write a letter to a friend who is serving a mission (having been in his shoes, I know he doesn't want to hear about my dating/college student woes...letters from home ought to be one of your greatest sources of hope and encouragement, not distraction). I can't think of hardly anything positive to say, and honestly I just want to whine. As I'm writing, it becomes easier to think of a few positive things to say, and I am able to think of someone else's needs before my own, writing stuff that is encouraging for my friend.
Step three. I was still feeling a little grumpy after that, but luckily for me I ran into a wonderful friend who listened to my concerns for a good five minutes, then gave me solid advice. Since it was raining a little, we ended up listening to the song Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head, and it was perfectly applicable. Sometimes there are raindrops falling on our heads in life. Things you don't want to happen, but that we really just can't control. Just because there is rain in our lives doesn't mean we have to be upset and crying about it.
And, as the song says, we're never gonna stop the rain by complaining! Rain is completely outside our control. But how we react to it? Letting it bug us? That's something we can control.
