SEC-S30W6: People Who Motivate You | My Mother

Talk about that person who motivates or inspires you, what has made them awaken that admiration in you?

To be honest there's only one person who I would look up to, in a thousand different situations, is my mom. She isn't someone great in this world, and she certainly isn't anyone rich or famous. But compared to anybody in the whole wide world, she's so much better than them all. What changed me wasn't a noble, heroic deed.

What changed me was merely the perseverance of a person who somehow never knew they were ever better than anybody. She just carries the stubbornness deep down inside herself and she doesn't crumble once she messes up. She can just simply get up, take a deep breath of air, with a quiet strength in her eyes and move on.

School and work and raising kids and all the troubles and bumps in the world-she has been able to make it through them all with that quiet strength inside of her in every case. She didn't even try to tell me that it wasn't difficult; she just told me that it didn't have to destroy us.

Out of everything that I have learned from my mom-what truly sticks out above and beyond all else-what I truly believe will influence all that I have done and am able to do in this world, is the strength of tenacity in comparison to skill. And when the doubt started setting into my brain, I begged her to give me what I thought was the simplest thing in the world, "You don't have to be the best, you just have to show up." And through the years, that has become the true testament to all I have ever been told.

She is not aiming for perfect, but for perseverance. What is the benefit of shooting too far over the target of your reach to impossibly miss? I think we profoundly undervalue the power of simply having to "show up". I think this lesson will carry through my entire life and through every task I can accomplish. For months during the hellish part of my high school life when I was cramming for an exam that I was so sure I was going to bomb.

It had pushed me to a point of extreme depression where I felt nothing would ever lift me up. Finally, she came in my room and didn't offer me a consoling pat on the back and feel bad with me, but just said, "So what next?" And immediately I resented her, and wanted her to feel sorry with me. She stood in my room for a little while and told me about a job interview she felt she did a phenomenal job on, but had the most embarrassing interview of her life, then said, "Failure only beats you when you stop.

I stopped everything right there and took charge and instead of sulking, planned on making a spectacle of myself in the best way I knew how. I resolved to re-examine my failure, reach out for help, painfully rebuilding myself from the beginning. When I felt like quitting I would hear her, "just show up and momentum will pick up," and I did. I ultimately ended up taking the test again and passing. I gained more from that failure than I ever could have imagined and this lesson carried me through it. I learned perseverance not through a self-help book, nor through a bombastic motivational speaker, nor through anyone I have ever encountered, but my mom.

Thanks for reading my post I'm inviting @goodybest, @abdullahw2 and @mesola to participate.