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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