I’m sure that many of you have woke up in the middle of the night with intense anxiety, you try to escape your tiresome worries for just a brief moment maybe brushing your teeth or washing your face, but when you are done you look up into the mirror and you become stunned by your reflection, not because of how you look, but because you are asking an incredibly intense, horrifying, and dangerous question that is beyond your immediate comprehension, that question is “who am I?. Today, I would like to tell you to never ask that question from now on in your life. Allow me to explain, that very question comes from the inner idiotic and cruel critic in your mind, a critic that is drawing a narrow shape for you to fit in where no line can be erased. Instead, I want you to think like an artist and use your imagination to help answer a more meaningful question, “Who do I want to become?”.
For me, thus far self-reflecting on the basis of that question has helped guide me through the challenges of my life, primarily in two forms improving the characteristics of myself, and to be a better companion to coexist with peers, loved ones, and others within an ever-growing society. First of all, self-reflection has helped me improve the characteristics of myself, it began near the end of my senior year in High School. Throughout most of my life, I resented practically almost every moment of it, In my personal life I was lazy, anti-social, immensely depressed, uncontrollably angry, I tried to cope by eating fatty foods making me borderline morbidly obese and I would try to escape reality by watching TV.
In school, it wasn’t much different because it was a never-ending series of skimming through courses with grades of a D average, with the sole motivation of the bare minimum work required in order to pass my course without being held back for another semester. I thought at the time there was no point of continuing school after graduation because I had no money, my parents had no college fund, and I kept telling myself that I wasn’t capable of doing so because I wasn’t smart. But I had a convenient twist of fate when my Aunt from California who I seldom met offered me the chance to go to College in return I would pay her back during my grace period, maintain her house when she’s at work, and most of all become at least a C average student at College. But I was reluctant because it meant that I would have to temporarily leave most of my life behind in Wisconsin along with completely changing my mindset in order to survive college. Until I came to the realization that if I decide not to take that leap of fate on a once in a lifetime opportunity then I would live in absolute remorse and condemn myself to an existence that I hardly considered worth living. So as you see here I obviously took the opportunity of that chance and I improved tremendously on all fronts. I am more motivated, happier with life, I lost 50 lbs within a year, I’ve studied practically religiously helping me to have at the college a current GPA of around 3.5.
Through self-reflection, I was able to recognize as an adult that I really had the power to change my life. The final reason how self-reflection can help you is by being a better companion to your peers, loved ones, and the society at large. I believe that before a person feels obliged to protest about how other people behave or how society is unfair, they should stop to ask themselves if they have fallen short as well in their life. The reason is that if you are incompetent in your own life, then what compels you to believe that you are ready to take on the complex challenges of another person or system. It is common to forget that there are sometimes problems in your proximity that needs consideration within your life until you can be orderly and honest enough to decide if you know your code of ethics because there is no point forcing someone to endure your misguidedness. But when you genuinely feel competent in understanding your purpose and skills along with the capacity inspire others through managing all the difficult tasks in your personal life, then it would be beneficial to advise or help a friend or a group out through your unique experiences and constructive criticism and vice versa from them. Which I have tried personally to do the struggles of procrastination and disorganization in my family life as an example before I left for college none of them would care to listen to what I had to say because as far as they were concerned I fell just as short as they did. However, when I began to succeed in college through scheduling and organizing my school notes, books, and documents, then they have become less hesitant to take my advice, where my family has slowly become more organized in their daily lives.
Today I had the privilege to share with you the meaningful impact of self-reflection which has helped me improve the characteristics of myself and to become a better companion toward my peers, loved ones, and society. Now, of course, probably most of you have gone through many similar or more difficult circumstances than what I have dealt. But if there is anything that I think is worth emphasizing in this speech it is mostly the fact that we will all end our stories relatively the same way, and it would be the greatest tragedy of your life if it didn’t reflect the greatest hero on the greatest adventure that you could imagine.
