These words echo through my head as I clearly remember my 10^th grade math teacher giving me a condemning look when I gave no answer to her trigonometry question. I felt the pain of looking stupid and lost at that moment. A question rising in my head, why can’t I get the answer to these questions? The kind of questions that we don’t get to go over in class, the ones that aren’t explained thoroughly, the ones that in which we need to be creative and think outside the box in order to deduce the answer. I was sometimes referred to as smart, the type that would get good grades and so on, but personally, it was never a matter of being a genius or someone with extraordinary abilities, but rather someone that would put in the work needed to get the results; however, every time I would stumble on a question that I haven’t seen before I would end up paralyzed because I knew even before my 10^th grade comment on how I am not that smart to get such questions, I knew long before that that I wasn’t that level of smart. I was a hard worker, and the thing is, the power of my subconscious words were more powerful than anything else; the power of my thoughts were more power than reality and I believed that the successful outcomes of any of my goals were primarily if not solely dependent on the amount of effort I put.

So, that’s when it began. A journey of always feeling like I needed to walk the extra mile, I needed to spend the extra hour, I had to fight for an extra day or an extra week or even an extra year to compensate for the lack of being “not quite there” that naturally comes some My own set of ideas and repetitive thoughts telling me that I’m not ever going to think in that way or be that kind of person. It’s me telling me that I can’t do it, and the voice in my own head was stronger, and I think, will forever be stronger than any other person’s opinion. A lot of people would admire the hard work that I put in things when I set my goal on something. People would complement the dedication and the work effort that I put into things, but I never liked people noticing that. It always felt more like heavy weight put on me because smart people seemed like they could do it effortlessly. They can just get the same results without even putting in the effort. I wanted to portray my image in the same why and not let anyone know about the amount of work I put. At a certain point, however, it ended my being too much. Acting like I don’t care, being afraid of admitting that I care too much, and I couldn’t simply state that, well, I work hard because I’m not really that smart and I need to work hard in order to get the same results.

No one likes to say that because it sounds weak and it indicated that the person saying it lacks both the confidence and the faith necessary to believe in themselves. The thing is, however, I know that I’m not the only person being self-conscious about this. I know millions of people feel like they lack wither the mind or the wittiness to do a certain task, and I personally throughout all my journeys and hardships in life, found no better way to overcome these seemingly insurmountable obstacles other than hard work. So yeah, I work a bit harder than anyone else, I spend a little more time than anyone else, I practice a bit more than anyone else, but this is all because I desire a bit more than anyone else and I know that all men are created equal, but some work harder pre-season.