Believe In Yourself Even if You Feel No One Else Does

Image by Lucienne from Pixabay 

I was watching a movie called Freedom Writers based on the real life story of Erin Gruwell who in 1994, as a naive straight-out-of-college teacher, worked with class of juvenile delinquents, gang members, drug pushers and underprivileged students. The school deemed these kids incapable of learning and felt it was more a matter of them being warehoused until they were old enough to drop out on their own – if they lived to see that day.

Instead of giving up, she inspires the kids to take an interest in their education and planning their future. She encourages them to keep journals, recording the stories of their lives to get them engaged, and assigns reading material that relates to their experiences before taking them on trips to places beyond the streets of their childhood lives, to museums and so forth, and teaching them about the wider world and other people’s struggles.

Specifically Erin uses The Diary of Anne Frank to show them, like them, a 13 year old girl who faced baseless hatred, bigotry, persecution and a system out to destroy her. Eventually, the class’ study of Anne Frank and their continual journal writing leads them to extend an invitation to one of Frank’s protectors, Miep Gies, and to raise enough money to bring her to their school.

When the old woman arrives, she tells the group, “I did what I had to do because it is the right thing to do—that is all.… Anyone, even a teenager, can turn on a small light in a dark room.” After a student calls her his hero, Gies quickly deflects the title: “I have read your letters, you are the heroes, you are the heroes every day. … Now your faces are engraved in my heart.”

The kids went on to graduate from high school, half went to college and some even went on to university and higher studies. The stories of Erin Gruwel and her students, as they move from their freshman year to senior years from 1994-1998 were collated and published in The Freedom Writers Diary, which is what the movie was based on.

It was a timely reminder for me of how – specifically in those years of adolescence – the difference it made to me have someone who believed in me. I was lucky in fact to have several people, two fantastic swimming coaches and others who just said the odd thing along the way that made me dig a little deeper and do that little bit extra that made all the difference to the outcomes.

There are so many ways in which kids’ self esteem can take knocks. Just recently my daughter related a story from her own classroom, where a teacher told her that her writing wasn’t good enough and, after flipping through her whole book told her she needed to “try harder”.

Apparently he then went on to tell the class that their writing can be a reflection on who they are. Ergo my daughter, who has struggled will dyslexic tendencies and made huge strides in her reading these last couple of years, received a message that isn’t good enough, and that she isn’t good enough. From all the study I’ve done on the human psyche and trauma I know this is one of the most common subconscious messages that people play in their heads.

But it’s not just kids who need to feel that belief. I saw an open post dedicated from husband to wife (a lady I know) that was inspiring. It was a page from N.R. Hart’s Poetry and Pearl’s 2 called Unexpected. It starts “She’s the girl you never saw coming. The unexpected one who calms you, centres you…she gets you, really gets you, like no one else ever has. She is your best friend, lover and soul mate wrapped up in the prettiest package” and so it goes on.

It’s a beautiful prose that reminds me of just how powerful having another see you and believe in you can be. But of course, it comes with a warning in my head. I know it’s normal and healthy to want others to see us and believe in us, but it’s not healthy when I need others to validate who I am.  That is the sign of codependency, when my very sense of self is shaped by that approval and disapproval, which is not a fun place to be.

I was also reminded of another aspect of believing in people this week when a friend of mine pointed out that there were times they felt I was trying to change them by empowering them, which can also be seen as a criticism. Again true, I am guilty of seeing people’s potential and forgetting that unless they can see that and want to reach for it, I’m a better friend that can accept them as they are.

My daughter’s teacher may have been trying to convey that he believed she can do better, for example, meanwhile it also implies that who she is isn’t good enough. It would be a different matter entirely if she had heard “I can read this, but I believe there’s a beautiful hand writer locked inside you waiting to be seen, if you want to explore that let me help”.

I think the key is really about allowing people to determine what is it is they want and helping them believe they can be it, do it or have it. I will admit I find it so much easier to believe in others than myself.  Human potential is something I’ve always been interested in and I do believe – objectively – we can each be, do, have whatever we believe we can.
Sometimes the circumstances of my life provide overwhelming evidence that maybe I can’t be, do or have the things I often don’t even allow myself to dream of. I get caught in a loop of inner voices and evidence of my not worthiness. Then I get so distracted with other things it just falls off the radar.

Until I watch something like Freedom Writers and that voice inside me says “remember” and I start to feel inspired again.

Lately I’ve chosen to set aside the inner voices that have distracted me constantly in a bid for justice. Fighting for what I want and deserve is something I became well practiced as growing up. But it’s also an illusion when it creates inner turmoil and not inner peace; the calm, clear knowing of inner peace. Where I’m not concerned with what others think, only how I feel. And from that place I know I’ll make good choices.

Bringing myself back there I’ve started to see again the many reminders of who I am, what inspires me, what I’d love to offer and do in life. The job at hand now is to stay in that centre of inner peace and believe in myself enough to reach out and take the opportunities that are sure to come my way if only I am open to seeing them.

Because there are many people out there, kids growing up every day, and the many adults who try their best to raise these kids. Adults, while trying their best, who still have the inner doubts they had that were seeded there when they were kids, which have inevitably attracted many experiences to really enrich the idea that they are not worthy, or are not enough or are different and so on and so forth.

Breaking this chain is what calls me. It’s why I write to create awareness in myself and others, and why I feel called to be and do more to help kids as they are starting to grow, before life gathers too much momentum and shows them time and time again they are not worth it and stop believing it is even worth trying.

So what inspires you? Where have you felt called to be, do or have more than you are/have/do now? When there aren’t those around us who believe we can reach for what inspires us, we live in an age where it’s easier than ever to reach out and read, hear or watch the stories of those who have overcome the odds and made a difference anyway. Will you?

If you enjoyed reading this, you may enjoy Magic Happens When You Believe in People, Shine Your Inner Light - Let No One Keep You Down, Start From Where You Are, Now Go and Be Great, Mankind’s Great Summons: Turn Your Pain Into Medicine and Heal the World and Finding Your Purpose – the Magic of Those Who Believe in You. To be the first to receive these posts, you can also opt to subscribe to my blog.