How I find success

Transformation and overnight success gets a ton of hype. I mean it makes sense, everyone wants big results in short spans of time.\n\nBut the problem with these overnight successes is that you never get to hear the back end story. The only thing you get to hear is that they did it so quick and you should too. The process is eliminated from the story. These stories lead us to believing that we need to wait around for our defining moment to have a breakthrough.\n\n\n\nBut here’s the truth... Take it from me, someone who was bullied for most of her elementary/ high school years, had low-self-esteem and did not believe in herself a single bit. Changing my life around was entirely in my hands and there was absolutely no way I was going to wait around for “a defining moment.\n\nI wanted to become a type of person who lived my life with strong standards, who believed in herself, someone who could be counted on by people that I cared about. Now this was a whole lot of transformational change that I was willing to take on.\n\nThe only problem was, I didn’t know where to start. Nevertheless, a f t e r months and months of reading psychology books, I took on the identity recognition approach. It is known to be true that to change yourself, you need to believe new things about you.\n\nWhen you take on a certain identity, your behaviors change to support that new distinctiveness.\n\nFor example, an Olympic athlete attaches his/her personal identity to being strong, athletic, best in the sport, inspirational and utterly disciplined. It is important to note that because they recognize strongly with this identity, they’re able to navigate through life and make great decisions without having self-doubt. The personal identity they have for themselves pushes them to (1) workout on a consistent basis, (2) eat healthy foods, (3) carry out behaviors of a public figure and (4) always take actions that will inspire the population around them.\n\nThe good news is, you can do this too. All you need to do is pick a target of how you’d like to see yourself in the future and start behaving in ways that support your future reality. This can work in each area of your life; health, wealth, love or sheer happiness.\n\nFor me personally, I picked first lady Michelle Obama as an inspiration. Following are the admirable traits that gravitated me towards her:\n\n(1) Strong Character: Mrs. Obama’s ability to motivate, inspire and call others to action on social issues is extremely commendable. Her courage to stand alone has allowed her to fight for social issues regardless of how controversial they were.\n\n(2) Self-Confidence: She believes in herself so deeply that others around her get moved by her vision for the future.\n\n(3) P e r s e v e r a n c e : Mrs. Obama is the first African-American First Lady in U.S. history. Though she was d i s c r i m i n a t e d against, she stayed put with her vision and pushed through all the adversity.\n\n(4) Relatable to others: Though she was a political leader’s wife, Obama spoke from her heart, she allowed the world to see her for who she really was as she shared her strengths and weaknesses with the world.\n\nHaving an inspiration to look up to allowed me to reverse engineer my mindset and behaviors. Overtime, I tweaked all aspects that I did not appreciate about myself and substituted them with aspects that I inspired to have. The identity recognition approach has brought many changes in my life. I have been able to become a change agent for South-Asian women in our society, become a motivational speaker, a fantastic conversationalist and a mentor for youth at risk in our society.\n\nI take pride in being a woman of colour and winning Miss Lower Mainland 2017. It has given me the opportunity to serve more than 60% of the population of British Columbia and help inspire others around me to push themselves to accomplish greater goals.\n\n \n\n