About ten years ago, I had a difficult time preparing myself for the start of the new school year. From what I remember, I really did have a great summer, so it wasn’t that. I wasn’t returning to a bad work load either. Actually, I loved my job. The issue was that I was feeling especially down about doing my job in a space where I had frequently been met with negative energy. So, I had already positioned myself to rejoin this space where I knew I would not be too happy. Before even starting on day one, I had already made up in my mind that I was not ready. Although there are usually a few different reasons why people do not want to return to work after summer break, there was one reason, in particular, that I could not settle within myself. Based on my past experiences with this reason, I did not feel like the situation had changed much, and I would be going right back into the lions’ den I had left at the beginning of the summer. 

  So feeling the way I did, I was not interested in putting my mind on enjoying the last weekend of my summer. My mind was too heavy with what was to come. I literally created fifty different scenarios that I told myself were ahead and going to continue to have a negative hold on me. But somehow and for some reason and with slight resistance and hesitation, I decided to take my sister up on her offer to join her at a festival featuring one of our favorite artists. I am pretty sure I was looking as down as I was feeling and carrying with me a cloud of funk by way of my foul attitude. Still, we paraded into what would become one of the best nights before the start of the school year I had ever experienced. I mean it was an awesome time. The artist did a phenomenal job, and the entire audience was on cloud nine. Not to mention, I sang and danced until my heart was completely full. I had such a wonderful time that I was reminded of everything around me that was good, including my job. This led me to question how and why I had allowed myself to get trapped and caught up in a hell I created in my own mind. Why had I allowed myself to become so anxious?

  PAUSE. Check Yourself, Girl! Happiness begins with and in our thoughts. It really is as simple as that. You have to choose happiness on purpose. We can’t tiptoe around whether or not we think we are happy or are going to have a good experience. It has to live in our minds. That night at the concert, I realized that I was fighting with myself and using hella’ energy to be unhappy and have a horrible time. It wasn’t natural. Being in an unhappy space is not natural. I couldn’t fight what I was feeling. I felt an overwhelming urge to let the joy that was creeping up in me take over, and that feeling was freeing. I was free to accept that a new school year meant new beginnings. What could be more exciting?

It is unfortunate, though, that I made up my mind about the direction in which my school year would go before it even began. I had also made up in my mind that going to that concert would be just a minor distraction before starting a terrible new school year. It wasn’t until I actually felt myself struggling to be mad, to be angry when all I wanted to do was sing and have a great time that I realized I needed to let it go. Do you understand the power in that? We fight to live in an unhappy state. When I figured that out, I understood that it was up to me how I would enter work the next day. No one had control over that except for me. Why are we forcing ourselves to cry when we really want to sing loudly from mountaintops? Stop having that ridiculous fight with yourself and making the decision to be unhappy while anticipating the worse possible outcome.