Becoming Your Best Self: Michelle Obama's Top tips for Success

"The only limit to the height of your achievements is the reach of your dreams and your willingness to work hard for them."

Michelle Obama has been one of the most powerful and influential women in my life. She's not just the wife of the former president or the First Lady, she's a self-made, hardworking and an empowering woman striving to change the lives of many women and young girls around the world. From being a Harvard educated lawyer to making it to the White House, here are the takeaways from reading her book, Becoming.

The power of hope

This is what the Obamas have talked about since they first started their journey, more than a decade ago, and which has remained something that carried them through every moment in the White house. The belief that something better is always possible if you're willing to work for it and fight for it. Michelle says it's their fundamental belief in the power of hope that has allowed them to rise above the voices of doubt, division, anger and fear that they've faced in their lives. The hope, that if we work hard enough and believe in ourselves, then we can be whatever we dream of regardless of the limitations that others may place on us.

Should its the hope of folks like my dad, who got up everyday, doing his job at the city water plant with the hope that one day his kids would go to college and have opportunities he never dreamed of.

Be consistent

You've got to practice who you want to be, you don't wake up one morning and you're suddenly who you think you want to be. If you're gonna be a hard worker, hard work doesn't just appear, you have to practice working hard, you have to practice effort. Good things don't come easy and effort is where you grow, sometimes you fail and not letting the failures or the stumbles define you is the key to succeeding.

Resilience

How are you going to respond when you don't get that job you had your heart set on? For all of you who're gonna be teachers, what are you gonna do if the students in your class next year just don't respond to your lessons? For all of you going into business, how are you going to respond when your boss gives you a goal that feels way too high? See these are the moments that define us. Not the day you get the promotion, not the day you win teacher of the year, but the times that force you to claw and scratch and fight just to get through the day. The moments when you get knocked down and you're wondering whether it's even worth it to get back up. See those are the times when you have gotta ask yourself: "who am I gonna be?" Michelle also let us in on a secret. As someone who has hired and managed hundreds of young people over the course of her career, never has she asked someone she was interviewing to explain a test score or a grade. She has never once made a hire just because someone went to an Ivy League school instead of a state school... What she looks for, instead is what kind of person you are. Are you a hard worker? Are you reliable? Have you stepped outside of your own self-interest to serve others?

Read & write

The First Lady preaches to read, read and read. One of the biggest reasons why the president is a great communicator is because reading has always been his greatest strength and the strongest pursuit. He's a voracious reader. Michelle says she encourages her girls to challenge themselves with what they read and to keep writing and to keep practising. The first draft means nothing, you're gonna do ten drafts, and it's not failure, it's writing. It's not the teacher not liking you because it's all marked up in red, when you get to be a good writer, you get to mark your own works in red. That's the power of practice.

When you keep rewriting, that's what writing is. And if you come out with those skills and then you're confident, you can articulate, stand up straight, look anybody in the eye and say this is who I am, its a pleasure to meet you. My message to them(girls) is, if you can walk into the white house, meet the first lady and say, "My name is- how are you?" and look me in the eye, then there's nothing you cant do.

Don't be afraid to fail

The only way you learn is by failing, it's not failure, it's what u do after you fail. Do you let it eat you up? do you quit? do you give up? or do you let it bolster you and does it serve as the challenge in your mind to do more. to take some risks, to step outside of your comfort zone. Failure is a feeling long before it becomes an actual result. It’s the vulnerability that breeds self-doubt and then is escalated, often deliberately, by fear.

Know your value

Michelle talks about being the Vice president of community outreach for the University of Chicago, and the reason she was, is because she didn't compromise. Before that job, she worked as the Associate Dean while being a part-time mother on her own. Knowing what her time and energy were worth, she talks about the time she walked into the president's office and demanded full payment for what she could deliver.

I said, If I take this job I need flexibility, and I need full pay. So if you want me to leave my kids, then you're gonna have to pay me because I could do the job, that was never a question. I knew then I wasn't gonna sell myself short. I don't view it as bravery, I'm not gonna be taken advantage of. I knew my value.

Define yourself

As First Lady, she has always felt a deep sense of obligation to make the biggest impact possible with her platform, taking on issues that were personal to her. Issues like helping families raise healthier children, honouring the incredible military families she met out on the campaign trail, inspiring the young to value their education and to finish college. Despite all that she has done politically, such as working with congress, and giving speeches to CEOs, military generals, and Hollywood executives, Michelle worked to ensure that her efforts would resonate with kids and families. What I find fascinating here, is how she embraces her authenticity by planting a garden, Hoola hooping with kids on the White House lawn, doing mom dancing on TV, celebrating military kids with Kermit the frog and at the end of the day, staying true to who she's always been.

I found that this journey has been incredibly freeing because no matter what happened, I had the peace of mind of knowing that all of the chatter, the name-calling, the doubting, all of it was just noise. It did not define me, it didn't change who I was, and most importantly it couldn't hold me back. I have learnt that as long as I hold fast to my beliefs and values and follow my own moral compass, then the only expectations I need to live up to are my own

Keep moving forward

The most influencing quote by the First Lady was to never view your challenges as a disadvantage. Instead, it's important for you to understand that your experience facing and overcoming adversity is actually one of your biggest advantages. She talks about the time she worked as the dean of a college.

In that role, I encountered students who had every advantage –- their parents paid their full tuition, and they lived in beautiful campus dorms. They had every material possession a college kid could want –- cars, computers, spending money. But when some of them got their first bad grade, they just fell apart. They lost it because they were ill-equipped to handle their first encounter with disappointment or falling short.

Life will put many obstacles in your path that are far worse than a bad grade. You’ll have unreasonable bosses and difficult clients and patients. You’ll experience illnesses and losses, crises and setbacks that will come out of nowhere and knock you off your feet. But unlike so many other young people, you have already developed the resilience and the maturity that you need to pick yourself up and dust yourself off and keep moving through the pain, keep moving forward.

Becoming has been one of the most life-changing books I've read that have had a strong impact on the way I look at life and the hard work it takes to get to the top. Throughout her time as First Lady of The Unites States of America, Michelle Obama has worked and made significant impacts on the lives of many around the world, being just one of the many reasons why she's someone I look up to.

Sai Nandhana