It’s finally Friday, and it’s been one of the hardest weeks you’ve had in months. You decide to treat yourself and buy your favorite drink at Starbucks to celebrate making it through the week.
You go to your first class of the day and set your drink down on your desk. As someone is walking by, they bump into your drink and it spills everywhere: on the desk, on the floor and on your backpack. What would you do?
This was my very predicament a few days ago, and initially, it felt like my world was crashing down. I couldn’t believe that after the week I had just had, the one thing I had been excited about had been ruined.
As I was grabbing handfuls of paper towels from the bathroom, I took a moment to slow down and breathe. I realized I was making a huge deal out of something that, in the grand scheme of things, didn’t matter at all.
In college, life can feel like it’s moving so fast, between tests, clubs and maintaining a social life. It’s easy to feel like you’re always on the go and can’t spare a moment to pause and think. Even so, through all those overwhelming feelings, the best thing you can do for yourself is keep a positive mindset.
Having a positive mindset and remaining optimistic seems like such a small thing, but it can change your life drastically. Once you start to look at the challenges you might face every day with an open mind, you will feel infinitely better.
I could’ve spent that entire day angry and frustrated with the girl who accidentally knocked over my Starbucks, but that wouldn’t have done me any good. What had happened was out of my control and in the past, so there was no use dwelling on it. By choosing to stay calm, I avoided ruining the rest of my day with a sour mood.
College is hard, that’s just a fact. In your four years here, there’s bound to be a gen-ed that you have to claw your way through the homework of. Inevitably, there will be a test that you don’t do well on or an internship that you lose, and you can either let that crush you or you can pick yourself back up.
Instead of focusing on how bad an assignment went, focus on the future. Let go of all the stress inside and remember that you are only human, and it’s okay to make mistakes.
Every rejection you face is an opportunity to practice resilience and perfect the art of bouncing back. Being resilient and using any disappointment you might have as motivation to improve is the key to success and happiness.
To keep yourself grounded and moving forward after a rejection, you can try journaling about your feelings to work out what went wrong and how you feel about it, or how you want to move forward from there. Getting your feelings out and processing your situation can help you make sense of the world when you feel lost.
Additionally, setting goals and making positive affirmations for yourself can help you along your journey to positivity. Changing all of your “I can’t” statements to “I will” and “I’m learning how to” statements will reinforce a growth mindset and help you stay kind to yourself.
Through all of this, remember that positivity doesn’t mean ignoring your bad feelings; it just means acknowledging them and choosing hope anyway. Authentic optimism works in conjunction with taking proper care of your mental health, and the more you work on each, the more they will build each other up.
College is the perfect place to have these failures; that’s what it’s designed for. When you fall, if you’re there to pick yourself back up and keep growing, you’ll truly be doing yourself a favor.
The more you practice this mindset, the more it will stick with you throughout your life. It’s no secret that post-grad adulthood can be rough, but practicing a positive mindset will help you emotionally succeed after your time at Penn State.
Whether you’re down about the essay you just can’t seem to sit down and write, or getting rejected from that frat last weekend, positivity will turn your life around. It’s always helpful to remember that life isn’t about what happens to you, but how you react to it.