Success and a Feeling of Accomplishment Can be Found in Helping Others

Perseverance plays an important role when it comes to making it in life. I was raised by the saying, "The best way to help yourself, is through helping others." As a young child, I did not really understand what this meant. As I grew older, the meaning became clearer.

Up until the time I was nine, it was just me and my mom, so expenses were never hard. When I was about ten years old, she got married. Since then she has had three children and times have not been easy. There have been plenty of times when I have had to sacrifice many of my plans in order to make sure my little sisters are taken care of while my mom is at work to make sure she can provide for us. A few years ago, I would see this as irrelevant, but now I understand that it has helped to make me more responsible. By realizing all the things my mom has had to sacrifice, I better understand that the world does not revolve around me.

To be honest, I used to be a very selfish person. I felt like I never had to help anybody out because people never took time out of there day to see about my personal or emotional problems. During my junior year, my best friend formed a group called Peer Leadership. She came from a high school in California, where they created the group in order to help students see that they had more in common with students in the same grade level as them and to show them that they are not alone. The Peer Leaders were responsible for a group and basically had to tell them things that "fill up their balloons", which are things that add stress or create barriers in their lives. We had to be open and get personal, but by the Peer Leaders sharing our own personal stories, other students were able to better respond and feel more comfortable telling us things that have and continue to happen in their lives. It was not until after we did the sessions (called Synergy Days) that I became aware of the fact that people I never knew were going through similar situations, and would have never been able to open up and express hidden feelings if somebody had not set an example for them.

There comes a time in life when you have an epiphany about being compassionate and generous just out of the kindness of your heart. I have become a more open-minded person, and I've made it a main focus to become a listening ear for anybody who needs it. It is important to not only listen to somebody who is having problems, but you also have to have and show empathy. Sometimes you have to help others as a necessity of your own life. When you do, you help yourself in ways that are unexplainable.

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