Go Forward with a Happy Heart by Alyssa

Go Forward with a Happy Heart by Alyssa - February 2014 Scholarship Essay

Someone that I have always admired very much said, “Go forward in life with a twinkle in your eye and a smile on your face, but with great purpose in heart.” Gordon B. Hinckley was the 15th president of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. I am a member of this church, and it is what is the most dear to my heart of anything I have experienced in life.

Almost everyone has a period in their life when they just don't feel like smiling. We all know that life is not always sunshine and rainbows, and everything can't always go the way we want it to. In a period of my life where this was the case- I didn't want to smile, I didn't even feel like I could smile- I read this quote. It hit me with force in several different ways.

First, go forward in life. I could not simply sit and wait for things to get better. I needed to do something about it. I realized then, more than ever before, that everything is a choice, including my own happiness. I had been making myself miserable by dwelling on things that I could not change. When I changed my perception, I was able to continue forward.

Second, "with a twinkle in your eye and a smile on your face". I didn't know if that was even possible in my situation, but I decided to try. In trying, in putting that twinkle in my eye and smile on my face, I found that what I chose to portray on the outside quickly became what I felt inside. Because I looked happy, I felt happy. I wanted to focus more on others than on myself, and I was able to reach out and lift others because I had been lifted.

Last, "but with great purpose in heart". This last part hit me the hardest. I was not moving forward and I was not happy mostly because I did not have a purpose. I didn't know where I was going or why I was here. But now I do. I found a purpose to keep me moving forward, to keep me happy- serving others. When I reach out to others and lift them up when their heads hang down, I develop a real love for them that fills my heart to its fullest capacity. When I do this, there is no room for sadness or self-pity. I devote my time to improving myself and to helping those who need it, and that drives me to happiness and to a better existence and a vision of a better world.

The lesson I learned from Gordon B. Hinckley has been written in my heart for a few years now, and they have been the happiest years of my life. I know that what he said is true- it works, I tried it for myself. I recognize the power and happiness that come from serving those around me and lifting them up when they are down, and I encourage anyone who feels the way that I did- like a smile is the hardest thing in the world to accomplish- to take his advice.