Who are you becoming?

Saturday, May 4th, 2019. The day a single woman impacted me and tons of other incredible people.

Her name? The one and only Michelle Obama. American lawyer, university administrator and writer, who was First Lady of the United States from 2009 to 2017. She is married to the 44th U.S president Barack Obama and was the first African-American first lady. She’s basically a superwoman and is a huge inspiration to so many girls all over the world, including me.

She’s impacted so many people all over the world and I had the opportunity to be impacted by her too. There are so many things I’ve learned from her. From her presentation and talking style to the things she talked about, it was all so valuable.

Presentation and talking style

Michelle has given so many talks all over the world and in my eyes, is a world-class speaker. I adore her way of speaking and presenting.

Typical presenting stuff

Michelle has mastered all the typical things of presenting. Talking slow, body language, smiling, boss mentality. Just everything that could make a good presentation, she has it all. This is all stuff you’ve probably heard before but to be able to watch someone who is so incredible at the typical presenting things was so cool. I was able to see how amazing it looks and how engaging it can be. I was able to feel how it impacts a person.

This made me realize that mastering the basics is so important and can be super impactful. Especially when you're giving a huge talk to tons of people.

Her special touch

Michelle has this super interesting, engaging, and amazing thing that she does. I like to call it her special touch. Not everyone can do this and you can really only do it well once you master the basics.

Her special touch is her. Her incredible, inspiring, amazing self. She has so much personality and passion in everything she does. She will never say or do something that isn’t her.

When someone has their true personality and passion you can tell. You’ll just know. That was one of those moments where I just knew. This personality and passion she showed just added so much to everything she said.

This made me realize that showing who you are and showing your passion is super important in everything you do. It changes the presentations so much and makes it 10x better.

Her knowledge

Obviously, she has a ton of experiences. Experience is knowledge. So she has a ton of that too. I got the opportunity to hear some of her knowledge and take in so many things she had learnt. There were tons of valuable moments and we could be here all day just talking about them. Instead of doing that I’ll give you some main ones I found super interesting and you can go be inspired and learn other things from her too:)

Failure

I may have talked about this before but there were a few things she said about this that I found super interesting.

She talked about the learning aspect of it and how failing is just another opportunity to learn and grow. I know it should cliché but it’s honestly true. Failing is a huge opportunity to grow and you can learn a lot from it. You can get feedback and iterate for next time.

There was one thing she said that made me have a huge realization.

“Nobody important has the time to look at all your failures and judge you. They are to busy worrying about their own”

I’ve always had this thing where even if I say I don’t care if I fail I’m upset when I do. I always feel like people will think less of me for getting that bad mark or giving that bad presentation.

This made me realize that nobody is going to care and if they do care and they do judge you they probably aren’t very relevant.

Nobody super important or legit will be thinking about the end of your presentation and how you messed up the last bit of it. In the end, it will all be okay.

One thing to think about is if you are going to forget about it in a year or two then is it really worth your sadness? Just be happy that you can learn, get feedback, and do better next time.

We know nothing

The world is so big. There is so much knowledge in the world. We know a very very small percentage of this knowledge.

A lot of teenagers (yes, me too) like to think we know everything. We like to think we are super smart. But that is not the case.

She was telling this story about how her daughter was going off to college and she was living in a dorm room. She was just in her room and one day she called her mom. She told her mom that her room was so dusty and super dirty. There had always been people that would clean up for her and she didn’t even know it. She told her mom how it was super dusty and her mom said that she needed to dust. She had no idea and this was huge to her. Then she realized she had no idea how to even dust.

This is the smallest thing but the moral of the story was that we can think we know everything but we don’t.

We will learn and grow over time but we don’t right now and never will know everything. There will always be something you can learn.

Long story short, be a life long learner. Trust me, life will be way better that way.

Takeaways:

• Mastering the basics of presentations is key
• Showing who you are and showing your passion is super important in everything you do
• “Nobody important has the time to look at all your failures and judge you. They are to busy worrying about their own”
• If you’re going to forget about it in a year or two then is it really worth your sadness?
• We don’t and will never know anything but that’s okay. Just be a life long learner.

Thank you for reading my article. Check out my other articles for more! Feel free to connect with me on LinkedIn and check out my website! Don’t forget to follow so you never miss an article and leave some claps:)