I recently became a legal adult not too long ago, and I must say that transitioning into adulthood has been difficult. If I could go back in time to my toddler years, I would have taken more time to enjoy them. I cherish the days when life was easier, and I didn’t have to worry about various aspects of life. During preschool, I would have appreciated the different hues of the watercolor paints. During nap time, instead of making funny faces at my friends, I would have actually went to sleep and had pleasant dreams about candy canes and unicorns. When I went home at night, I would have pulled out my coloring book, and enjoyed a cool cup of apple juice while relaxing. Wouldnt that be awesome to be able to go back to?

Unfortunately, I don’t own a time machine, and therefore, I must deal with my present endeavors. I must take life one day at a time and deal with all obstacles that come my way, no matter how difficult they may seem. Older and wiser people always say to me that I should stop complaining about my college years, because when they were my age they didn’t have any problems. What people fail to realize is that times have changed, the world has changed, and so have the people in it. Life can be extremely difficult in these days and times, and the only way to truly get through every day without cracking is to find a balance. Without a proper balance, life would become quite unbearable.

I myself decided during my first semester of college that I would find balance within my life. It took me some time to break down different aspects of my life and decipher who and what I should keep in it. After going through a few difficult situations, I knew I had to analyze my life and find balance within myself. I started to think of myself as a scale!! My body from my head to my toes was the beam of the scale. My arms,stretched out, held the cluster of chains that are attached to the two metal pans. These pans held the different aspects of the world, that I was carrying with me every day throughout my life. As I began to develop cognitively, I came to the realization that I was weighing myself down with a lot of negativity, and I was UNBALANCED. As I grew and matured, I realized that in order to progress, I had to start tilting myself from side to side, and letting some of those worldly things slide off of my scale.

Whether it may have been parasitic friends, family, difficult situations, unworthy opponents, or just bad memories, I had to start letting go of all the negativity.The negativity was blocking the positivity. I was so weighed down by it that I was blinded to the positive parts of my life. I was letting myself be sucked into all the wrong in my world, instead of enjoying all of the right. As I started to allow myself to let go of all the bad situations, bad people, and the bad memories, I began to tilt more towards the positive side. I started to pull myself out of all that despair and anger, and I found positivity and happiness.

When I finally started to feel balanced and centered, my life started to change. Of course there were other obstacles that I had to overcome, but once I became balanced, I learned how to disassociate myself from the negativity. While learning how to not take on negativity, I started to see so much more positive things happening around me, and for me. My grades were improving, my relationships were getting stronger, and I was becoming stronger as a person. I learned how to forgive people quicker, so that I could remove the negative feelings from my life quicker. I realized the more that I held these grudges, the more I would dwell on certain situations, it would eventually consume me.

The first step to living a positive life is to let all of the negativity roll off of you.

DO NOT LET IT STICK!!

DO NOT hold on to it!!

DO NOT overthink it!!

DO NOT give negativity any second chances!!

Life is too short to worry yourself over worldly things that make you unhappy, or weigh you down. Let go of as much negativity as you possibly can and embrace the positivity!! Of course there will always be some hardships in life, but these difficult times will influence you to work harder so that you can experience more positivity. Letting go of negativity is easier said than done, but it’s obtainable. Once you start to let go, you will feel lighter, less stressed and more at peace. I personally was in a toxic situation where I was allowing one person’s behavior to bring out the worst in me. I was letting anger consume me and once I came to the realization of what was happening I had to take a step back. I analyzed the situation I was in, and then I had a conversation with myself. It dawned on me that this unhappy person that sought to make my life miserable was miserable herself and reflecting her negative energy onto me. However, my mistake was letting her miserable behavior, pull me out of character. I decided that day that I would no longer allow her issues to anger me. Instead I didn’t hold on to her negativity, or let her negative words stick to me. At that moment, I told myself to stop overthinking and I made the decision to be happy and stop giving negativity second chances.