By DMA Senior Serenity Wagner

Live authentically. Those two words are what I have learned most from this Optimistic Mindset class. Embrace all of you and all of your faults, but enhance the good parts and create good habits. One way to understand your thoughts and your body is to start meditating. We all tried meditating to have a few minutes of focusing on our body and breathing, and not letting distractions get in the way. Meditation has many benefits like self-awareness, focusing on the present, patience, and gratitude. All these things are what can lead us into living with love and authenticity. Gaining all these things from meditation can also help build better relationships and make more social connections with new people. Instead of staying on your phone and avoiding people, you should start conversations. Also, while in conversations with people, you should be open to sharing different opinions. We as a society have learned to steer away from certain topics, but why not embrace those topics. Why not be understanding and loving to new opinions and ideas. In Optimistic Mindset we were able to be open about “controversial” topics and became comfortable with having very civil and understanding conversations. We also learned ways to make our mental health way better by doing simple things like working out more, not using social media, just getting sleep, and practicing our signature strengths. Our signature strengths are characteristics that are most essential to who we are. For example, if one of your top strengths is kindness, you should do some kind acts. Doing more kind acts will lead to you feeling happier because you are doing something that is a prominent part of your character. Just putting the things you enjoy into action will lead you to be happier. These new techniques have helped me to become more authentic, loving, and happy.