Bailey is a fan of all feelings (Photo: By Ron Tom, ABC.com)

And when I saw the theme of this week’s “Shiny Happy People” episode of Grey’s Anatomy, I thought it was a good time to remind us all of this.

This is how Grey opened the episode:

“It’s a common belief that positive thinking leads to a happier, healthier life. As children we’re told to smile, be cheerful and put on a happy face. As adults, we’re told to look on the bright side, make lemonade and see glasses as half full. Sometimes reality can get in the way of our ability to act the happy part, though. Your health can fail, boyfriends can cheat, friends can disappoint. It’s in these moments when you just want to get real, to drop the act and be your true, scared, unhappy self.”

Later in the episode, when a patient named Amber found out she was going to lose three fingers, her positively-trained reaction was to smile and be grateful that she was alive at all. As her friend said (played by Emma from Glee!) Amber should see the bad news as just a small bump in the big ride of life. But Baily (played by Chandra Wilson) could tell Amber was struggling. She was faking her feelings. So Bailey gave Amber permission to embrace her true, scared, unhappy self instead.

Bailey: “You can cry, Amber, it’s fine. It’s a lot to take in all at once.

Emma from Glee: No, she needs to stay positive. That’s how we get through, we stay positive.

Bailey: She was excited. She was hopeful. She was eager. And that has been crushed. She has the right to have some feelings. She can be positive tomorrow. [to Amber] You can be positive tomorrow.

The truth is, real health and happiness comes from feeling it all. When bad things happen—and bad things do happen to good people, all the time—you may be tempted to try to look on the bright side each and every time. And I encourage you to get better at doing that. But sometimes, the hurt is immense and our heart needs to sit with it for a while. Sometimes we need a good cry so we have the energy to be positive tomorrow.

So if you’ve been going through a rough time and had your hopes in dating, love or life dashed, I say this, as Bailey did: You can cry. It’s fine. Keep wiping tears and writing angry letters that you’ll never send to your ex or to God and keep sobbing it out, because the only way you’ll get past the messy stuff is to empty it from yourself, until you can’t cry another tear and frankly can’t be bothered to. You can be positive tomorrow. And with all those tears shed, you’ll be far more able to.

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Big love,

Begging only gets you so far... (Actress Sandra Oh as Dr. Cristina Yang)

But instead of sitting back and focusing on something else, or in learning new things, Yang became desperate. Oh, and you know what happens when you become desperate…

Yang started asking every doctor if they needed help, even flirting with a doc she’d never worked with to beg her way into surgery. And the more she begged for a surgery rotation, the more turned off her superiors became, and the more they reached for other residents instead. I sure recognized my past in her actions—but when I used to do that, it was in bars or clubs where I had my sights set on snagging a date with a guy.

I know this is TV, but the fact is this: Desperation reeks in life, in work and in love. You’re allowed to

want what you want, and you’re encouraged to go out and get it with confidence. But when life doesn’t give you what you want, don’t beg! Begging is so unattractive. If you’re not getting the attention of someone you like, don’t wave your arms, bat your eyelashes, and send sexy texts to shock someone into noticing you. It doesn’t work! Just like we talked about in How I Met Your…Quirks, we deserve to be loved for who we are—as is—and we shouldn’t need to splay the peacock feathers and blast an airhorn to get people to see that!

So please: Be happy being yourself and don’t try too hard to make sure people notice. Desperation is only going to send your quarry further in the other direction. Instead, stand tall, smile big, and turn in a positive direction yourself. Take someone’s indifference as a sign that you’re not meant to connect with them now, and see it as a sign to learn something new—about yourself, about other people, about life.

Big love,