You Will When You Believe - Whitney Houston

bysarazoldan

2.3K followers

11 years ago

This one's inspired by Daniel's recent blog post Haley's Sad Day at School.

The unfortunate circumstance of schools teaching and guiding students to live with an employee mentality really bothers me. When I was still in high school I made a commitment to myself that one day (while still a young adult), I will go into the high schools in the communities like mine and speak to the students for a bit about the world really has to offer. I remember in 10th grade we had a subject called 'Careers'. We learned a lot of interesting information such as multiple intelligences, learning styles and IQ, but that's the extent of what I remember from those lessons (and I was a good student!).

Reading Daniel's blog made me appreciate even more than I have until now what my parents have really given me. My mom is an entrepreneur and has owned a home-based business since I was about 4... I grew up understanding the basics of building a business and at a young age I used to help her out in the store with filing papers, entering inventory into the computer and checking the customers out (not in the way you're thinking, but in the 'let me ring you up and take your money' kind of way :-).

I was still in elementary school when I began giving arts and crafts lessons for even younger girls on Sundays and ran week long 'camps' during the break between when school was out and day camps officially started... My parents always encouraged me to use my skills - my creativity and leadership personality and if I ever felt I wasn't up to the challenge (ie. giving 7th graders scrapbooking lessons while in 9th grade myself), my parents told me that I most definitely could. They not only had faith in me, but they truly believed in me.

I was recently dating and conversations were a bit stilted, so I went online and looked for a 'get to know you' game. Borrowing someone's idea, I gathered numerous thinking questions and pasted them on a deck of playing cards; one question per card. (It's a great idea by the way - don't hesitate to try it!) One of the questions went like this: If you could make a 30 second speech to the entire world, what would you say? Another was: If you could offer a newborn only one piece of advice, what would it be? And yet a third asked: What is the one thing you'd like most to change the world?

I would like to share with you the answers I gave, in sequence.

To the world I would say: In a world where you can be anything, be yourself! All things are possible if you just believe. And you need to believe in yourself! You can do anything, and the voice in your head that says you can't is a liar! Others will try to dissuade you from stepping outside the box, from thinking for yourself, but don't listen to those who have negative things to say. They are limited in their beliefs and they are passing on those limited beliefs to you. You can do anything!

To the newborn I would say: Don't let anyone limit your beliefs in yourself.

And lastly, here's what I'd like to change in the world: Peoples' confidence in themselves and their self-esteem. The answer my date gave was, "Everything! The world is so messed up today; most specifically, the youth." And while I agree with him, I think there's really one underlying root cause for this problem. Lack of self esteem. Think about it for a second - So many of us fall victim to the lures and temptations of that which should not be a part of who we are and what we do because "everyone's doing it!" Peer pressure is an unfathomably strong pull and so often leads us to places we would never dream of going on our own. If we truly all had the self-confidence we needed to believe in ourselves and stand up to others, there would be no issue and we would all just live happily ever after! Ok, well, maybe it's not quite as simple as that, but it would definitely be a start....