Sitting there in my room packing my clothes, I remember looking up and glancing at my reflection in the mirror and locking eyes with myself. I looked into my eyes and promised myself I would be willing to grow to become the man I wanted to be. And at the time, the man I wanted to be was just someone who was accepted. So whatever I had to do to be cool, I was going to do.
When I got into college, I met a group of guys who were all definitely cool and popular. I figured when you first meet people, they can’t tell if you are cool or not, so I would sneak my way in under the radar and just kind of be the satellite friend. I was lucky to have a roommate all the girls liked and all the guys wanted to be like, and he brought me along whenever he would hang out. I felt I was now cool through association.
Everything was good except for the fact that a lot of the new cool people I was hanging out with drank and smoked weed a lot. That was never my thing. I tried hanging out with them while everyone else was stoned and drunk and I was the only sober person, and I remember not wanting to seem like a loser (and thinking I needed to get messed up too because being sober and hanging around drunk people isn’t fun at all), so I decided to give in to peer pres- sure. It seemed like this was the only way to finally get what I thought I wanted, which was to be cool and have a bunch of friends.
Drinking underage and smoking weed were not things I would have been proud to tell the world I was doing. In fact, if you want the simplest way to know whether what you are doing is right or wrong, just ask yourself this simple yet powerful question:
“If what I am about to do were to be put on the front page of every newspaper and on every website for everyone and my mama to see, would I be okay with that or would I feel ashamed?”
That one question alone will completely change your life for the better, even if that is all you take from this book (remember the power of the slight edge?).
The real challenge to living a shameful lifestyle is called our conscience. It’s the little voice that helps us know what’s right and what’s wrong. I call it our “internal pitchfork.” We have an internal vibration inside of us that lets us know what is good and what is bad. And my internal pitchfork kept going off like crazy saying “WARNING, WARNING” because what I was doing was not consistent with the real image I wanted for myself.
I wanted to be cool, but I didn’t want to sacrifice my personal beliefs of what I was sure was right. My internal pitchfork kept telling me what I was doing was not right.
What’s funny is the more I tried to fit in, the more I felt like I didn’t want to fit in. I wasn’t happy. I was trying to be someone and something I wasn’t. One night when I was hanging out with everyone while they were drinking and smoking, I looked around and asked myself, “Are these the people I really want to be like?” Would I feel proud being on the front page of every newspaper showing me drinking and smoking? The answer was no.
I felt really conflicted because I wasn’t happy hanging out with the cool kids, and I wouldn’t be happy if I weren’t cool. What was I to do? I wanted to be accepted, but what I didn’t understand back then was the rule of three.
Arel Moodie is widely known as America's Top Young Speaker. He has spoken to over 65,000 students in 39 states and 2 countries on the topics of student success, student leadership and student entrepreneurship. He is a leading authority on helping students of this generation succeed in school and in life. He is also the best selling author of the book Your Starting Point For Student Success. To find out more about Arel's book, go to www.startingpointbook.com. To find out more about Arel's speaking please go to www.arelmoodie.com.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment