Turning Point?

May 20, 2025

I spent much of my life fake-smiling while feeling disgruntled and angry. I didn’t think I was too bitter—at least not outwardly. I rarely talked about my feelings and never knew how to express my inner thoughts like most people seemed to.

I often heard phrases like, “It’s all about your mindset,” and “Life’s what you make of it.” Honestly, I don’t think I ever encountered these sayings until I joined the Navy—an experience that profoundly shaped my perspective. Ironically, the Navy made me hate those phrases. Why? Because the people who said them were often the ones making life miserable for everyone else. So, how could life be what I made it if they kept interfering?

For a long time, I let those sayings go in one ear and out the other. I let the smallest things bother me, things that wouldn’t matter the next day, let alone years later. Eventually, every thought I had turned negative. I found the worst in everything and every situation. I made good situations bad, and bad ones even worse.

People didn’t want to be around me; honestly, I couldn’t blame them. I didn’t want to be around me either. For a while, that didn’t matter to me. I considered myself an introvert, and introverts prefer being alone anyway, right? But eventually, something shifted. I began to see how my negativity affected me and everyone around me.