"How do You Stay so Strong?"

Quite a few people ask me on a regular basis the question "how do you stay so strong?" To be honest it's quite a hard question to answer, but to put it simply I just tell people to "get on with it". Until the last two years, my life has been quite a breeze. I didn't experience any childhood drama such as bullying. My parents are happily married. I'd never experienced any tragic disasters, such as death. I guess this made my childhood quite easy, I was rather carefree. I didn't really care what people thought, I just simply enjoyed life.

It was in my late teenage years when I started to experience some of the cruel events which occur in life, such as the death of my grandad. This was the first family member which i'd lost, and as awful as the experience was it only made me stronger, and ready to face the more negative events which would come in the future. I had an incredibly difficult year, including my dad having a heart attack, and soon after my relationship ended when my boyfriend at the time fell for another woman. Yet again, the incidents only seemed to make me stronger. These incidents were all going on at the time of my A levels, and as hard as it was, I put all my effort into passing them. This evidentially payed off, since I'm now at Lincoln University.

My attitude to life is that you only live once. It's spontaneous, not planned. Of course, there will be hard times but there will be many more positive ones. I don't tend to let things affect me. When an incident happens, I cry and talk it through, but then I tend to just try and move on, and it works. Keep yourself happy by arranging positive things. You have to be strong within life and not let the negative things defeat you and bring you down, otherwise you'll be upset all of the time. You have to try and stay happy and strong. Through a rough patch, remember that it won't last forever, and soon you'll be smiling again. People who've hurt you before are no longer in your life, they don't deserve your tears. Besides, there are plenty more people who care about you and want you to be happy, so smile for them but only if you mean it. Never fake a smile, it'll just make you feel worse, it's much better to talk things through with someone who cares.

Each morning, listen to a song which makes you instantly happy. It'll set you up for the rest of the day. Having ups and downs in life is all part of the journey, here's where the cheesy line "life's like a roller coaster" comes in, but it's kind of true. Be your own person, don't take shit from others, and remember that you're only here once.