Keep calm and carry on.

Sometimes when life's challenges are thrown at us all at once, we find ourselves preferring not to deal with them so we throw ourselves into the task of avoidance, finding any means possible to keep ourselves busy and try to move on without dealing with the problems. I discovered the hard way, that this is extremely unhealthy and does us more damage, than good.

How many of you are guilty of the above crime? Probably most of you to be honest, even if you haven't realised.

I've been in situations that are hard to deal with, and I've been in situations that come back to haunt you, and I can tell you now, the latter is most definitely the hardest.

Nothing in life is easy let alone the things that hurt us, but if it was all a piece of cake, it wouldn't be worth it. No matter what hits us, in time we learn how to move on from the bad. I may not always see it this way when I'm hurting, but I'm a strong believer that being hurt in life is good because if we were never shown how bad it's possible for us to feel, we'd never appreciate the things that make us smile, and how amazing they are.

If you're feeling hurt, or angry, or upset, or betrayed, or any negative feeling, have a think about your entire life so far. Have you been happy before? More often than not, the answer will be yes. Therefore, you know that it is possible for you to feel happiness. There's nothing wrong with you for feeling rubbish; you're not a freak, or messed up, or a robot, you're just bogged down with life, and all of the hurdles that you haven't learnt to jump over yet. Don't panic; take it step by step, and gradually you can teach yourself how to work through everything and smile again.

I did. Many times.

I've grown to be a strong believer in the phrase 'life is what you make it' because that's truly what it is. So much negativity can be brought into our lives so often that it's so easy to get bogged down and let it affect us. It's the natural option that our instincts choose because fighting it and believing that we can make the bad situations into something good seems so, SO much harder. At the end of the day though, if we just sit and let it all pile up on our shoulders, we will honestly never be happy. Also if we try to brush past the problems without working through our feelings towards them, I can promise you, they WILL come back to haunt you and then it's ten times harder.

We can't predict what life's gonna throw at us, nor can we prevent it, but we can learn how to challenge ourselves in the best possible ways, and we can learn how to smile in spite of our problems.

More often than not, people stare so long at the door that's closed behind them, at the thing they've lost, that they miss all the doors that are opening in front of them, because they're looking behind them.

Look forwards.

Jump forwards, walk forwards, dance forwards, climb forwards, crawl forwards, skip forwards, sprint forwards.
However you move, make it forwards, and only hold what's behind you as a memory.

Holding on to the past will never do you good.

Let yourself live, love, and laugh.
Courtney's Imagination★