For anyone that has known me for any extended amount of time, you know that I am extremely stubborn.

With that being said, it is very difficult for me to back down from the challenges that I face...even those that I probably should back down from.

In the past few years, I have dealt with a series of ups and downs in my life. I got into the college of my dreams...and then started to miss home. I started my sophomore year strong, making pretty good grades in all of my classes and experiencing success in my first USPA Powerlifting meet...and then I ran into a series of weeks spent alone and nearly bombed out of my next meet. I raised enough money to pay for (most) of my trip abroad...and then started to feel anxious about being in a different country by myself. I finished my first semester strong...and then my dog died.

I've started to feel great about myself, thinking I'm invincible and perfect for all of the positions that I have landed for the summer and continuing into my junior year of college...and then I start to doubt myself. I start to think "maybe I'm just fooling myself."

For every peak of happiness and success comes a valley of sadness, anxiety, and confusion brought on by the frustration of failure. Those valleys usually get into my head, making feel worse and worse about my shortcomings until I usually start to lose my motivation to keep trying.

The key words here are "start to." Never have I allowed myself to fully lose motivation to keep trying to improve, keep pushing forward even when I want to quit.

To be quite honest, this is the part that sucks the most. When I want nothing more than to just give up, sit down in that valley and cry for a rescue squad to get me out of my predicament, I force myself to keep looking for my way out. It's painful, it sucks, and I usually feel worse before I feel any better. So why do I do it?

I push through the sucky days of life because I know that it's only temporary. The only thing that can keep me stranded in those valleys is giving up entirely; you can never scale your way up the mountains that life puts in your way if you don't hitch up your harness and get to work.

If you don't believe in yourself, nobody will.

So what if I missed home? I reminded myself that I had a whole new addition to my life and that never meant I had to give up my old life. I forced myself to get more involved in my new life on campus and that made me feel immensely better about being "on my own" for the first time. So what if I felt lonely but didn't want to bother other people with my presence? I went out and got lunch with a friend anyways. So what if I was embarrassed about failing weights at that competition? Weights I should be able to hit in my sleep and have forced myself to keep working on, even when I wanted to quit the sport altogether. So what if I was afraid of being in a foreign country all alone for the very first time? I forced myself to break out of my comfort zone and fell in love with travel in a way that I never thought I, the biggest homebody I know, could.

So what if I have failed? I've forced myself to wipe the egg off of my face, lace up my boots, and tug myself back up to the next peak in my personal mountain range.

Nothing in life that's worth having is ever easy and that means that perseverance is key to every valley you may get stuck in. You just have to remind yourself that life is both hard and beautiful...it just depends on what you choose to see in the world.