Under the Crown with Danielle Parke
This archived article was written by: Danielle Parke
It’s pretty safe to say that we are all getting an education at USU Eastern. Sure, we learn about numbers in math class, cells in biology class and writing skills in English class, but if we are being completely honest with ourselves, we are learning more about life than anything else. As we keep busy with our classes, homework, work, sports and hopefully having some sort of a social life, it can become overwhelming to keep up with it all.
Recently I’ve started paying attention to what I am learning outside of my classes and how these things affect me. What I’ve noticed is how critical the power of having a positive attitude impacts me. I can almost hear the words my mom says to me, “If you have a positive attitude, positive things will happen to you,” and, “positive minds live positive lives.”
To my regret, I learned to brush these words off throughout my life, thinking happiness was much more complicated than that. Oh, if I would have listened to her! Had I listened, I know I would have been a lot happier in times of stress, worry and grief; not having to learn this all on my own, when the answer was right there in front of me.
At first trying to keep a positive attitude wasn’t easy. I started to notice how often little things that happened throughout the day could really bug me. The list went on and on. But once I began to look past those things and focus on the good things that happened in the day, I noticed how much happier I was beginning to be. My once long days began to fly by, my least favorite classes began to become my favorite, and I noticed myself smiling a lot more and saying hi to people I didn’t even know. Happiness began to become an everyday thing.
We are constantly learning new things, both inside and outside the classroom. As we go about our lives, let’s all try to learn to keep our minds positive and our thoughts happy. My mom is right; thinking positively will ultimately draw positive things to us.
