Despite what strangers and acquaintances seem to think, I’m not a positive or even particularly friendly person. I rarely, if ever, look on the bright side—I don’t even consider literal brightness a bright side.
So trust me: I speak from experience when I say that this is a seriously bummer way to live your life.
While it’s healthy to vent sometimes, it’s important to remember that misery really does breed more misery.
And misery is something no one deserves.
I want each of you to have true laughter, happiness, and joy in your days. I’m still figuring out how to have that for my own life, so in the meantime, I found someone who’s actually qualified to tell you exactly how to achieve this!
Meet Amy Keys.
Amy was diagnosed with Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome (POTS) in Fall 2015. She’s blogged about everything from her journey to her treatments to her fainting goats.
Her blog is titled POTS: Finding Smiles in the Trials. As you can probably guess, Amy considers joy a choice, and believes laughter and cheer are decisions you make each and every day:
“We have to deliberately hunt smiles down sometimes… choosing to look for happiness and laughs.”
She’s written extensively on that topic, but really, no matter what her subject of the day is, humor and tips appear throughout.
So going through her blog, I’ve picked my top 5 positive tips that even made a Debbie Downer like me nod along:
- Get a pet. Not feasible for everyone, but pets are quite therapeutic. It’s hard to feel sad with a fluff ball cuddling up with you.
- Ready a go-bag for medical emergencies. That way you can feel confident and prepared when your POTS has a bad day.
- “Lower your standards.” This is Amy’s way of saying, “Don’t be hard on yourself! Just do the best you can on that specific day.”
- Know your triggers and find your video game-style “cheat codes” to live less-stressed with your symptoms.
- Count your blessings—make a literal list and encourage everyone you know to do the same!
These are barely scratching the surface of Amy’s advice for living the best POTS life you can.
If you’d like more, you can find a comprehensive list at “Joy. Why? How?” where she also explains the health benefits of happiness.
