how to have a good day

This week has been a difficult week.

For one, school started again after a much-too-short summer break (seriously, did we even have a summer this year?). Being a sophomore and having already attended my high school for a year, I knew my way around the building. But it still seemed to be difficult to get myself from class to class throughout the day. Due to my struggles with anxiety, I spent the whole day with my stomach tied in knots. I was unable to eat anything, which didn't help my condition much at all. It was not a great first day.

For two, I was actually sent home from school on the second day (yesterday) with a fever. As a result of that, I stayed home today, and missed dance practice and the third day of school. I spent my day home moping around the house, wondering what I was missing at school, and how many syllabi and missed worksheets I would have to collect the next day.

By dinnertime tonight, I was feeling a bit hopeless. My first week of the 2014-15 school year had been a crash-and-burn experience thus far. I had no desire to return the next day, and next to no motivation to apply myself in my classes and pay attention to the lessons once I was there.

And then I realized how pathetic I was. I looked at myself in the full-length mirror hanging on the back of my bedroom door and told myself, "No. Tomorrow will be a good day. I'm deciding that now."

My philosophy is that if you decide for yourself that you will have a good day, then you will have a good day. This connects, in a way, to a quote by American industrialist Henry Ford. Ford once said, "Whether you think you can, or you think you can't - you're right." The quote is pretty self-explanatory. If you believe that you can do something, then chances are, you will be able to do that thing because you will not stop trying until you actually do it, because you told yourself you could in the first place. Sort of a "prove yourself right" kind of situation. On the other hand, if you believe that you cannot do something, then you probably won't be able to, because your own mindset will hinder your ability to do that thing.

Likewise, if you tell yourself that you will have a bad day, then you will most likely have a bad day, because you will have a negative outlook on that whole day. If you tell yourself that you will have a good day, you'll automatically put yourself in a better mood, and therefore have a good day.

So the next time nothing seems to be going your way, or you realize that you just haven't had a good day in a while, decide for yourself that very moment that the next day will be a good one. Remember that you have the power to make it a good one for yourself. Because everyone deserves a good day every once and a while.

I'm going to have a good day tomorrow. Are you?