"It is not the mountain we conquer, but ourselves."
- Sir Edmund Hillary
What do you want to be when you grow up? What is your dream job? How do you want to be remembered?
These are questions we are all asked at some point or another. Either through small talk, or career advisors, or even parents and friends. So how do we truly answer them?
Recently, I have been doing a lot of introspection. Maybe it is because of the new year, maybe it is because the world as we know it has changed so drastically. Either way, it has made me rethink the way that I choose to view my life and even live my life.
I have not been as active on social media and content creation. Like everyone else, life has gotten busy and sometimes unpredictable and overwhelming. Other times, I am not particularly called to create and thus do not want to create content I am not proud of. In the grand scheme of things, I think it is okay to take our time in this aspect, but to keep going.
I have been reflecting a lot on my life; what kind of life I want to lead, what kind of life I want for my kids, what I can do today to help my future self. The truth is it is all pretty overwhelming, which is why it is normal for us all to want to escape these overbearing thoughts once in a while. But somehow, there is always something in our lives that snaps us back to reality and makes us think about what direction we really want to go down. Then it is up to us to take the steps to getting where we want to be.
Our legacy is not the money and inheritance we leave behind to our children. Our legacy is something intangible that we are known for. We don't have to be a super powerful figure in this lifetime to be remembered, but we can make a difference in the lives of those we know.
I know that the legacy I want to leave behind in this world is to show people just how powerful they can be, if they simply got out of their own way. This doesn't mean you need to climb Mount Everest in a day even if you don't believe you can, but I think it is important to know that we are all more capable than we make ourselves out to be.
When we have a high degree of certainty in our actions and we know who we are, there is nothing more powerful than that. When we are able to show up as the most authentic version of ourselves, the energy that we emit from that speaks volumes.
One such example is when I got hired for my current job. It happened during the height of the pandemic, and I remember it being very hard to find a job, which is so different from our current world situation since the end of 2022. When I finally landed that interview, I was nervous, but knew that I had to show up as my full, honest self. In that respect, that was the hardest and easiest interview I ever had in my life.
The interview was difficult because I was breaking free of my old self and the superficiality of the way things are. In a typical interview, you have to be prim and proper and make sure you don't make any mistakes. Every little thing about you is being judged under a microscope, and there is no room for error. This causes us to mess up more often than not because we are not trying to be ourselves; we are trying to be perfect.
The interview was the easiest in my life because I simply went in as the professional version of myself. Of course I didn't put my feet up on the table in front of the CEO of the company, but when I truly showed who I was, it somehow managed to charm that original cold exterior the CEO had when he first met me. Somehow, I felt like a comedian in front of a cold audience, getting a few laughs in and ultimately winning over the crowd. I left the interview beaming, knowing in my heart that I did what was right by me and that, in turn, my employer also accepted me as I was.
All it took was a little trust in myself.
When I say that anyone can do it, I truly believe that. There are so many of us who continually hold ourselves back. We see ourselves as so imperfect and unintelligent compared to others. We think we can never accomplish what others did, we simply don't have the capacity to do so.
Yet somehow, there are so many success stories that happened throughout the course of anyone's life where they defied the odds. Not just the odds stacked against them, but even the odds they stacked against themselves. We are all capable of succeeding once we start believing it and having confidence in our own skills (and trust me, everyone has skills. We just need to learn how to use them to our advantage).
In short, if I could speak to my younger self, I would tell her that she was enough and to trust herself sooner in life. Although life is a journey towards discovering yourself and your path, we would all benefit from a bit of genuine self confidence and self-belief earlier on in life. But knowing that we are worth any amount of success we set our mind to, at any stage in our life, is the best way of achieving it.