With finals coming up, I’d like to address one of the most prominent issues I see with people in general, and that is, they spend way to much time dwelling on the past.

The past is the past. As much as I would like to say that there time machines available to take you back a few days and fix that bad grade in math, I can’t. But that doesn’t mean that you have to think about that over and over as if you could fix it by dwelling on it. It’s okay, relax. In 10years, that test grade really won’t matter.

One time during my chemistry class, I saw someone accidently fall out of their chair. I admit, it would have been embarrassing for a minute, but they really could not get over what they had done. Every two seconds, they would say, “Oh my gosh, I can’t believe I did that! How many people saw me? Were they laughing? Oh my gosh…” What I don’t think they realized was that if they hadn’t keep bringing it up, no one would even think about it.

So you fell out of a chair? Cool. Laugh it off and move on. In five minutes it won’t matter and you will have saved yourself a lot of worrying and focusing on the past.

Lafayette holds many opportunities to dwell on what you did wrong and worry about it.

For instance, say a class is furiously taking the semester mid term when the bell rings. The next thing you know, 25 zombie children walk out of the room with stunned looks on their faces. I can tell you exactly what they are thinking about. The past. Most likely, one of them will say “Dang it! If I had known that would have been on the test I would have looked that over a lot! I think I failed!”   

There are two problems with that. One, there is no way to know what will be on a test. That’s why it’s called a test. But when you take one that happens to be particularly difficult, don’t worry about it! What’s done is done. You can’t change what the test was like so don’t waste your time regretting the things you didn’t study. Two, odds are you didn’t “fail.” If everyone failed a test, the teacher would look horribly so they probably would not let that happen. Calm down and wait to see what you actually got before you freak out about it. It’s all good.

Now, you can’t change the past, but you can change the way you look at the past. Let’s go back to our embarrassed chair missing student. Instead of thinking how awful that was, they could have thought, “Hey, that was pretty darn funny!” therefore leading them to think a lot better of themselves.

Positive thinking can really change your mood about something, for the better. So next time, life has brought you a not so wonderful situation, don’t dwell on it. Get through it and forget it. You will be much happier in the long run.