Everyone has problems once in a while, it’s the natural course of life. What can you do to keep a smile on your face even through harder times? How can you have a positive life?

I’ve found myself thinking about the way we approach problems in our life. Life without obstacles wouldn’t be an adventure, but what do people usually do when an obstacle hits them? There are 3 types of people: the optimists, the pessimists and the realists. Or so they say..

The optimist will always keep a smile on its face, the pessimist will never have a smile on its face and the realist can balance things and weight them in order to see if it will turn out right or wrong. If you ask me, the realist is usually a pessimist, so we have 2/3 people who cannot keep smiling when trouble arrives.

If you are a realistic or a pessimistic person, you will most likely say that you don’t want to get caught in dreams and unreal things. Well, let me tell you this. Life is rough. Each of us needs to break from reality once or twice.

But let’s get back to our subject. Here are some things you can so in order to keep a smile on your face:

1. Accept the past.

Anything that happened in the past must be accepted by you in order to allow you to enjoy the rest of your life. Every experience will help you in your self development. Logically understand the fact that something that happened in the past cannot be changed, but everything from the past that boils in you, torments you will kill your smile. People have the power to forgive and forget. Use it as often as you can. The only thing your need to remember from past experiences is what you learned from it. The rest is trash.

2. Appreciate what you have now.

No matter how bad you think things are right now, you can be sure as hell that somewhere someone is in a worse situation than you are. You are sad because you can’t afford an iPhone? Well, somewhere, someone is crying because they can’t afford a piece of bread to feed their children. Your life is beautiful even just because you are alive, you are free. Never lose sight of this!

3. Allow yourself to dream and believe.

Hope comes from dreams, and dreams carry us through life, either we want to admit it or not. Don’t be afraid of breaking from reality, because reality is built upon our dreams. You want something, you dream about it, you follow your dream and even if the universe will throw everything at you, you will carry on because you have a dream, you have a purpose. Be sure that other positive people will follow you.

Life is much prettier with a smile on your face! Try it once in a while! If things get though, look at the pretty smiling cat here on the left.