Michelle Obama Leaves the Audience SPEECHLESS One of the Best Motivational Speeches Ever

well the first thing that i had to

overcome was my own guilt

because when you spend so much time and

money in my case taking out student

loans i came out of law school with a

lot of debt the notion that i wouldn’t

want to invest financially to recoup

that uh you know that initial investment

was a struggle for me especially growing

up as a working-class kid you know i

talk about the conversation i have with

my mother where i was trying to break

down how i wasn’t passionate about my

career and i i felt guilty talking to a

woman who had sacrificed so much for me

and probably never had the luxury of

thinking about

something as trivial as passion you know

so

explaining that to a working class

family how you’re going to walk away

from a solid career and a solid income

to

you know

pursue what’s deep in your heart you

know my parents didn’t

but also that it was part of the

challenge was what else was i going to

do

you know that that’s part i described

myself as a box checker because that’s

what how we teach kids it’s like there’s

a path you pick a career when you’re

seven

you study that career in elementary

school you go to college you get a major

and life choices are not that orderly

but that’s how we train kids and i was

right on that path and i knew how to

achieve i knew how to get aids and how

to get to the next level but no one

taught me how to dig deep inside my soul

and figure out what i cared about and we

don’t talk to kids about what they care

about we talk about what they should

major in what they should study and

those two things are very different

so part of the struggle was figuring i

had to re-learn

how to educate myself about who i was

school didn’t teach me that all those

degrees all those fancy schools didn’t

help me connect into who i needed to be

as a person so i had to

rewind all that learning i mean i think

the challenge is that education systems

are

developed for masses of of teaching

but every kid is so different um and if

you don’t have the resources to

individualize the the educational

curriculum

then you’re really pushing kids through

a funnel that may not fit them

and that’s something that i worry about

and see now in in my girls

this notion that you’re going to learn

something with innocent that every kid

is going to learn

in the same way at the same time is is

disastrous and it it creates box

checkers who then go on to careers that

may not fulfill them and then they’re

not good at it so the tough part for me

was relearning

all you know and figuring all that out

on my own uh

and so

i had to find people who could help me

you know i i did what i called

informational interviews i had to go out

and just meet people who were doing all

sorts of things that seemed interesting

to figure out what i cared about was it

kids

was it working with kids was it

mentoring was it education i didn’t know

i hadn’t explored it because i was on

the path to be a lawyer

so that was the hardest thing for me to

to understand how to do

is to walk away from the formal training

that i had gotten and to swerve into

something more creative and so would

your advice be to others it is important

to find your passion it is absolutely

important

and i encourage young people to try on

different hats

i think it’s a shame that kids are

forced to figure out so early in their

life and get on a path

so i encourage kids to do internships to

work

to talk to people who are doing things

that they think are interesting because

most kids are intimidated about

approaching you for example and saying

holly you’ve done some swerving

tell me about what you’re what you’re

doing um and having those conversations

in high school and in college before you

commit to something

but i think kids feel the pressure to

have to know what they’re doing at such

a young age exactly

16 17 18 when you’re making these big

life decisions in one of the first lines

in the first chapters question that i

hate the most that we ask children is

what do you want to be when you grow up

as if growing up is finite as if you get

to a place and at some point that’s the

end and that’s sort of one of our big

dilemmas that we ask kids so early to

figure out who you’re going to be at 5

and 7 and 10 and even 20 years old

so i do encourage young people to be

open to the swerve and don’t beat

themselves up if they feel they’ve maybe

not made the the right first choice

because life holly is long and as you

know we can have many lives within a

life we are always evolving that is why

i called the book becoming you know this

notion that we

that we ever stop evolving is just wrong

so i think you know as i my parents

taught me

more information is better you know

giving giving young people

the truth

helps them in the long run so

i felt like i had to share my truth and

it wasn’t a difficult thing for me to

share anybody who meets me i would have

the same conversation

so what i i couldn’t see

not sharing with the world what i would

share with anyone who i was trying to

help

what would you say to young women and to

young men about the importance of

seeking out strong mentors and what did

they mean to you oh my goodness you

don’t do anything alone

and i think a lot of young people think

that they look at people like us and

think you just magically appeared you

became

and there you are and it’s like no no i

i always looked ahead of me

at the women primarily who were doing

the things that i wanted to do i talk a

lot about um

valerie jarrett for example who has

worked in our administration but i met

her very early on before barack and i

even got married and she for me was one

of the first examples of a strong

professional

woman who was a single parent who was

doing a phenomenal job as a mother and

was just a boss at work and watching her

balance that and

not losing herself in either role you

know i

talk about how i’d sit in a meeting with

her and she’d be in the midst of you

know business leaders sitting around the

table the mayor on the phone

and her secretary will call and say her

daughter just got home from school and

wanted to talk and she turned herself

off in a second because she said i will

always make time for my daughter you

know so i saw how important it was that

even in the height of your career

putting your kids first was important

and that helped me sort of think about

how i wanted the white house experience

to feel for my daughters that’s why we

you know in so many instances we would

stop our day

you know no matter what was going on and

give that time to the kids because we

wanted them to feel like they were at

the center of everything even when their

mom and dad were some of the most

powerful people in the world so i

wouldn’t have known that that example

was possible had i not looked ahead

at the the women who were my mentors

i think a lot of women were afraid to

just put our cards on the table and say

this is what i’m worth

this is what i need to make this happen

i can do this but if you don’t

these are my top three things i would

have never had the courage to do it and

i think many women sit on their talents

and their gifts because they’re afraid

to make that ass sometimes we’re too

polite

in

the professional world and and many

women don’t have the luxury or the

leverage to make the kind of demands i i

that i did because i had the option of

staying home because my husband brought

in enough income that it would be tough

but it wouldn’t have been impossible and

i i absolutely realized that i i was

lucky to be able to walk in that office

and make those demands

you know people just don’t get the

credit that they need people are

juggling and managing to keep things

afloat all the time so we just haven’t

labeled it properly it’s happening and

people aren’t getting the credit for

doing it but if you work and have kids

you’re doing something flexible in there

to make that happen we just need to

label it

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