College is a stressful time in life. The most obvious causes being pressures from feeling the need to succeed and the fear of failing, as well as the constant tensions of time management. One may struggle with managing family matters, work, paying off bills and the blatant fact that if career goals are not met, one may be forced to work a lousy dead end job.

All of this adds up to an unprecedented level of anxiety, however, success can be gained by simply keeping a positive attitude. In order to keep a positive attitude, you must keep a positive outlook on life.

David D. Burns, M.D., wrote the book “Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy.” In it, it says that how we view the world is directly related to our mood. There is a popular misconception that our thoughts create our mood. On the contrary, Burns writes how our mood actually creates and changes our thoughts.

This is based on a grounded fact that reality around us is a constant we can never fully perceive. In the pro- cess of perception, we perceive aspects of reality that we interpret differently based on our mood. Then, through processes known as apperception, recog- nition and eventually evaluation, we decide how to feel based on our evaluation of reality.

Renowned psychologist Carl Jung describes this process in the essay “The Structure of the Psyche,” from the collected work “The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche.”

In conjoining the two statements of Burns and Jung, when we are depressed, we focus on nothing but the depressing things around us or depressing events in our life. Depression causes depressing thoughts and in turn our depressing thoughts cause an exacerbated depressed mood. It turns into a vicious cycle.

However, if happy notions are thought of our happiness causes us to perceive things that make us happy. All you have to do is think happy thoughts.

A strongly recognized paradigm of success, albeit a heavy double-edged sword, is that of self-fulfilling prophecy.

If a student feels they are going to fail a test, they may get depressed. They are likely not to study as hard as they would if they were not so depressed and as a result will score lower than if they had not been depressed. A happier student who is more confident would be more prone achieving a higher grade.

Ways to be happier would be to incorporate enough leisure time into your schedule so school doesn’t seem like a burden. It may take a bit of time, but part of maturing is getting into a routine. Also, exercise and a healthy diet are shown to help people keep a positive outlook on life.

Another great method to handling stress is called cognitive reframing, stepping back and reassessing a situation. An example would be if you miss the bus to school you should try not to focus on being late and relax instead. Worse things could have happened, and a good philosophy to take in this situation would be “whatever happens, happens.”

Success is not only grades on a paper, success is a mindset. It is a key and absolutely vital epiphany we need to have. With a positive attitude, a happy outlook on life and the discipline, confidence and ambition that are results of happy thoughts that you can achieve, we can do exactly that. Learn to take pride in your work, though remember that with expectations there can come disappointment.

So, work hard and do not stress and become depressed, because things will just turn out worse.

Take each day a step at a time. Feel good and think happy thoughts.