“Optimism, by the way, is not a superficial attitude. It’s a very muscular attitude. It’s a bold attitude that says no matter what, I can find a way. I can find the resources to deal with this.”
— Dr. Ned Hallowell
Best-selling author and psychiatrist
No one can deny the powerful influence music has on the way you feel. One moment you can be on top of the world, and then Evanescence’s My Immortal comes on and you can forget about ever feeling happy again.
To avoid having such emotions sprung on you without warning, crafting playlists for specific moods and situations can be a very handy tool. Whether you’re trying to keep a feeling going strong or influence yourself into a productive mood change, creating collections of songs that embody your desired results can be the quickest and easiest way to success.
Since this is the How to Be Happy series, obviously it’s time to discuss making your very own happy playlist! My personal happy playlist makes me feel like I just received the greatest news over and over again, every time I listen to it. Each song is so catchy, so dance-y, and so filled with feel-good energy that I can’t help but boogie my way to cheerfulness.
So, how should you go about starting your own happy playlist? Continue reading “How To Be Happy: Forge a Feel-Good Playlist”
Isn’t it weird how we just stumble on some things?
My hard drive failed this weekend, unfortunately, and I’m currently in the process of transferring my old files onto what feels like a brand new computer (I’m going to take this moment to say GET A BACK-UP DRIVE if you do not already have one, because you can lose EVERYTHING you have on your computer at the drop of a hat). Since not all files on my back-up drive are relevant or useful to me now, I’m opening many I don’t remember to see if they’re worth keeping.
Under my Documents folder, I saw this one Word Document I don’t recall titled “Life Lessons.”
Curious, I clicked on its icon. Up pops a page that is completely blank minus one short, unassuming sentence at the top. All it says is this: Continue reading “Accidental Hard Drive Wisdom”
In my last post I introduced The Cheerful Times‘ new feature, the How to Be Happy series. I would like to kick off this new addition with a somewhat heavier first tip that holds a lot of importance to me personally: throw out the bad apples.
We meet a lot of people in life. Some of them are insanely wonderful, some of them are downright unpleasant. Some of them start out being insanely wonderful and then turn out to be downright unpleasant. And some, of course, just straight out suck. With all the good people we have in our lives, why is it that we continue to hold on to (and often give priority to) those who make us feel a certain incompleteness?
I struggled with this for a long time. Throughout high school and a few years after, I put so much energy into Continue reading “How to Be Happy: Throw Out the Bad Apples”
Today was a beautiful day! It’s the beginning of March and my college campus was already blessed with a 60 degree preview to spring. One of the things I love most about randomly gorgeous days is the renewed motivation they instill in people. Suddenly everyone forgot about the winter blahs and being trapped in their poorly-lit dorm rooms by the outside wind chill, and instead played Frisbee on the field, watched the baseball game from the top of the hill with their friends and families, and even gave suntanning an early try.
The feeling today’s weather gave me inspiration for a new blog series: “How to Be Happy”. There may not be an overwhelming amount of tips highlighted in the series that are positively groundbreaking, but that’s not the point! It’s all about taking things that mean a lot to me personally and sharing my perspective. It’s nice to be reminded of ways to make us breath a little easier, things we often forget about when trapped in the depths of our busy, stressful lives.
The first post of the series will premiere sometime this week. In the meantime, please enjoy this picture of a happy pug in a turtle costume… it certainly cheered me up!
I hope your days have been just as beautiful as mine!
Kelsey
The Cheerful Times 