Promising to Change by Obinna

Promising to Change by Obinna - December 2022 Scholarship Essay

What good is a lesson if one doesn’t endeavor to change themselves because of it? It’s a question some have to think long and hard about. Life brings us many lessons. Life brings us many challenges. Life brings us opportunities to evolve and change for the better. But what good is trying to change if a person doesn’t realize any of that? What good is trying to improve oneself if he does not bother to accept that he has been challenged? What good is any person if they refuse to learn a lesson? Such are the questions that I ask myself when I think about what happened in 2022.
2022 was one of the hardest years of my life. I inch closer to becoming an adult, I get mediocre SAT scores, I lose a bunch of friends, and I miss out on a lot of opportunities. I had to deal with many difficult life events. But something good had to have come out of all of those, right? At least that’s what I ask myself in retrospect because at the moment when something bad happens to us, no one believes in the “good” side of what happened. We just think, “Oh this sucks; there’s no way for me to feel better about this.” So we wallow in pain and sorrow and cry for attention because we’re stuck in this mode of hopelessness, this mode of “there is no bothering to fix the problem.” This brings me to my first lesson: good things can come out of bad things. One should be a little more optimistic. Unfortunately, society has promoted a culture of pessimism and nihilism through dishonesty, a lack of trustworthiness, and the glorification of mental health issues. This is not healthy for anyone. Anyone. It is toxic and does not improve us in any way. It’s okay to have mental health problems, as they are very common, but glorifying or purposefully inducing them in oneself or others is one of the worst things a person can do. We need to stop promoting a culture of toxicity, although that is easier said than done. But it is worth it. It is far more pleasing to find the good in things and people and look forward to it.
But what good is a lesson if one refuses to change from it? That is why one of my goals for 2023 is based on this lesson. One of my goals for the year is to be more optimistic. If I am to improve myself, I must promise myself that I will make the necessary changes to my attitude. And I must hold myself accountable for keeping up with these changes. While it should not be okay for me to stray from this goal, that does not mean I should get mad at myself for doing so. All I need to do is just acknowledge that I messed up, pick myself back up, and move on. That is all. There is no need to create a scene over it.
This leads me to my other lesson, and it goes hand in hand with the first one: putting yourself down is pointless. We make mistakes; it’s what makes us human. We will never be perfect people. Therefore, it is not a good use of our energy to beat ourselves up over our miscues. I struggled with that all year because I felt as if I brought all my problems upon myself and that I could fix them myself, yet I decided to vent to everyone about them. I was continually getting mad at myself for the cycle of problems I had had. No wonder I could barely solve any of them. Instead of focusing on what I could do to solve them, I just wallowed in them and blamed myself for not just causing those problems but for causing every problem that has befallen me. That is just unproductive. A waste of energy. A waste of time. There isn’t any point in doing any of that.
But what good is a lesson if one refuses to change from it? That’s why I set a goal around the lesson I learned. Another one of my goals for 2023 is to not be so hard on myself. That way, I can actually work through my problems and change for the better without relapsing. In addition, I need to find my own self-worth instead of constantly relying on others to show me my worth because people’s opinions of me can change really quickly, so I will often end up more disappointed than proud of myself. Of course, I will have people help me with this one, but I have to realize my value and start being overall nicer to myself. Maybe I will become more productive and waste less time. The true impact of these lessons is in using them to change, which is why they form the basis for my goals for 2023. Next year, I pledge to be more optimistic and not beat myself up, and I will hold myself accountable for achieving these goals.