What I’ve come to learn in six months of living life to the fullest is that the saying is true:

Life is what you make of it.

If you choose to live through a negative filter, your life will always feel like it’s crumbling around you.

If you choose to never put focus on yourself and what makes you happy, you will feel unloved and unhappy.

For about 8 months I worked at a dive bar in Nashville. It was dark, smokey, and just not my personal scene. My coworkers were mean to me and the management was downright rude. I had absolutely no idea what I wanted to do with my life, what my priorities were, or what happiness really felt like.

I felt so stuck, so lost, and mostly like a complete failure.

I didn’t understand why life had brought this upon me and was choosing me out of everybody else to deliver such terrible misfortune.

Let’s just say there were a lot of tears, even more frustration and actual moments of looking to the sky and asking “WHY?!”

I stayed in this constant state of emotion for eight months. Eight months of unhappiness, not feeling fulfilled, and being completely and totally unimpressed with myself.

Then something changed.

My job fired somebody and I picked up three extra shifts in order to help them out. Days later I found out one of my managers had said something rude about me, after working six shifts in a row to help them out.

It was the straw that broke the camels back. Within two minutes I sent a message to one of my customers who had consistently kept asking me if I wanted a job at another bar. At the time I always said no because I was making decent money and I didn’t think that I would find anything better.

He answered right away and told me to come in to the next bar tomorrow for an interview. Within a day I was hired at the new bar and I told my old bar that I was quitting.

Three weeks into working at the new bar I realized something incredible.

I had consciously chosen to be unhappy for eight months.

I had consciously chosen to stay at a job that was making me unhappy and consuming my life.

Everyday I had been waking up and making a decision to stay and be miserable instead of cutting those negative vibes directly out of my life.

This is a lesson that I will take with me for the rest of my life.

I use it in every aspect of my life now, my job, my relationships, my friendships, and my decisions.

If something makes me unhappy, I don’t do it. It’s a simple equation:

Do things that make you happy = You are happy  

Do things that you make you unhappy = You are unhappy  

It’s like I have a monitor that is constantly scanning things to make sure that they SERVE ME and that I don’t SERVE THEM.

When that monitor catches on to something that is only taking happiness away from me and leaving me with bad energy, I know that I need to cut that thing out of my life as soon as possible or face terrible repercussions.

Find your happiness monitor and turn it on. Scan your life and figure out what things are sucking you dry of any good emotions and be ready to say good bye. Sometimes it’s easy and other times it’s hard but my second biggest lesson has been:

It’s always worth it.

Cutting the negativity from your life will revolutionize your world. It will give you a brand new perspective on just how much control you actually have over your happiness and it will show you that doing things that make you happy will turn you into a beautiful person.

If you’re feeling down, lost, frustrated, or any emotion that isn’t contentment or fulfillment-turn on your monitor and do some serious scanning.

Change your mind, change your life and welcome to your beautiful life.