Better

I asked myself the other night, "What makes me think that I have the right to teach everybody about self-improvement?"

I grew up with my cousin who had everything. To a 5-year old me, everything meant my grandmother's affection, our neighbors' attention and the coolest toys in the world. In the era of 3310 cool, she already had her Samsung flip cover colored phone.

We were really close, more than I was with my sisters. She would always share what she had with me. We would spend the day playing with her toys and we ended the day feeling happy. But our days weren't always like this. There were times when I felt that the world was always on her side and it puzzled me so much how she gets everything she wants.

When I was 11, she had this really pretty notebook. I wanted to have one exactly just like it because it was so pretty! Her aunt from the US gave it to her but sadly, I didn't know anybody in the US. There was no way I could get one like it. Right then and there, I could've ran to my room and cried because it was happening again - the world was on her side.

But I thought of something. I could use everything that I had then to make a pretty notebook too! I gathered my unused notebooks, some art paper and cute cut-out pictures. I was so focused on making my own cute notebook that I actually felt good while making it.

What I made was no match to her pretty notebook but I realized from then on that I can always choose to either dwell on the things and facts that I can't ever change or make myself better, the best way I knew how. The latter wouldn't give me what she had, but it replaced the sting of envy with the drive to become better, a better me.

Experiences like this don't happen to everybody. The lives we live are uniquely ours. I just can't teach what I know about self-improvement and expect you to right away believe in the things that I believe and do the things that I do. What I can do, is tell you stories of my own self-improvement and tell you what worked for me so that you will have the courage to strive for your own improvement too.

Now that I've laid all of that out, allow me to share with you my answer to that question I've posed above.

"What makes me think that I have the right to teach everybody about self-improvement?"

Honey, I've been in that dark place of worthlessness and I made it out alive. I'm better now.