Foresight

Ignorance is bliss they say, and that statement was especially true when I was growing up. I never could be dead set on what I wanted to do, or be when I grew up.  I always assumed it would work out for me in the end, but now I know that to be false and that I will have to work hard to get far in life. At age sixteen I had a job where I would sand car parts every day after school and everyday full time during summer.  It was an amazing opportunity to branch out and find a career that I enjoyed. As time went on work got slower, so there was a lot less to do around the place and I often would be doing many small things to keep me busy through the day.  At the time I never thought too much of the rapidly declining amount of work that needed to be done. The situation became very clear to me the day I was let go and I will never forget that car ride back home; I should have seen the whole thing coming. With car payments due every month  I became devastated watching every dollar I had saved up disappear and any ounce of hope for the future had been reduced to nothing more than fear. It was hard finding another job.  I never was a "people person" making it especially hard to try to sell myself. It had been awhile and I was starting to lose motivation. It wasn’t until one day where out of nowhere I told myself “what's the worst that can happen?” and drove over to a golf course handed in my resume and with enough courage proceeded to check back in every week to see if they had reviewed it. And after two weeks I had been hired

The Significance of Courage & Hope

Everyone I surround myself with always tries to tell me how I should live my life. I had a dream, a dream to one day become a professional Golfer, to make it to the PGA tour - every Golfer's dream. I wanted the young kids to look up to me as their role model, and I wanted to be everyone’s favourite. This past summer I finally had my opportunity to take my game to the next level, as a collage out in San Diego reached out to me and gave the opportunity to move out there and learn more about the game of golf. This collage opens up doors for me so I can get noticed by a Division 1 College. This is finally what I've been waiting for my entire life and I was so excited, but as the summer went on I thought a lot about it and I started second guessing myself, “Am I really good enough?”, “Can I play with the bigger, stronger, and smarter kids?”, This is what I wanted my whole life I thought. Let's just say reality hit me. I've been to tournaments in Phoenix and those kids play all year long they are a different caliber of player, kind of like they were bred to play Golf. I’m just some random kid from a little city in Alberta, Canada. I realized that college would be the farthest I’d make it. I am a really good golfer and myself and everyone else knows that, but I don't want to try and live out a dream if it may come crashing down.  I made a big decision by myself with no help from anyone not to go and not to try and live my dream. My friends and family members were all very confused on why I made that decision, but I knew it was the right decision and that’s what really matters. Now you may be asking yourselves what this has to do with Courage and Hope? I believe that there is still hope for me to become something, something I can wake up every morning and be excited for, something I truly love doing. Don't get me wrong I love Golf with all my heart, but I’m afraid if I try and take it to the next level and start taking my game really serious that my love and passion for the game will run out, just like my love for hockey ran out all those years ago. It took a lot of courage to make that decision, but I’m happy because I know my path still has hope and I’m excited to see where this new chapter of my life takes me after high school.

-Sam

My Passion In Life

The passion that I have for basketball inspires me to keep going, no matter how hard life is.This passion of mine helped me become more confident and prouder of how I view myself. As the time went by, I discovered many characteristics that taught me to strive for progress and to have space for improvement. Ever since I learned to play basketball in grade middle school, I have driven myself to get better each day and taught myself a few techniques that made me stand out from everyone else. I have worked hard for 7 years to get where I am right now, and it has been an amazing opportunity to become a part of a program at Cathaolic Central High School. The people that I have surrounded myself with made such a positive impact, they were my inspiration and motivation. I’ve met a tremendous amount of people through basketball who still encourage me to grow not only as a basketball player, but also as a responsible young gentleman. These are the people who have been my coach and people who I played basketball with. I really believe that without my friends, family and my coaches I would not have been able to achieve my aspirations for basketball, because of them I'm always determined to play and work hard. The very sad thing about basketball is saying goodbye. Last month was very hard for me and all the seniors who played for CCH because we had to play our last game and we had to say goodbye to our High school basketball career and move on to a new chapter. The last thing that I would want right now is to say goodbye to basketball as it taught me lessons that I never imagined I would learn.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2_fDhqRk_Ro

-Raphael

In the picture, I can say it was my best basketball season in CCH. It is not because I'm a senior on this team, but it is because the people who surrounded me while playing for this team. These people really helped me to be the best version of myself and helped me grow not only on the court, but off the court. I really believed that I would always have my basketball IQ and knowledge for the rest of my life. As a basketball player and as a sign of respect who recently passed away, for Kobe Bryant I will say mamba out. 

Anxiety

Anxiety is the feeling of apprehension about what's to come in your life. It makes you overthink, worry, and fear about what's coming. As a teenager, the start of adulthood, the start of change scares me because being a grown up comes with big responsibilities: finance, health, companionship, freedom and time. I have to worry about being late to work, my rent, to have fun with my life, and to keep track of what I have to do next. When I was a kid I didn't have to worry about anything because my grandma and my mom were always there for me, and they gave me what I needed such as love, support, and money. My grandma used to tell me to never doubt a person's capability of doing things. I live by these words, but somehow I never did love myself and was never proud of what I had accomplished. I was always scared of not making my parents proud, of not being good enough from both inside and out meaning my appearance and my personality. I did always try hard for people to like me, but at the same time judgement overfill my mind. Because of these judgments I never had the courage to approach new people, or make friends, as I was always waiting for them to talk to me. In reality there's nobody judging me, but as a teenager who lives in a world where what matters is how a person looks, fear gets the best of me and I just can't help but doubt and hate myself. 

Through time, I have realized that when you break your silence, people start coming in your life while fear starts to fade. It took me years to tell my mother and I expected the worst, but I gathered all the courage in the world and told her what I felt, all my fears, and she said that I was perfect and that I should never try to be what I am not because she loves me no matter what. By then I realized that looks didn’t matter, the fears that built up inside me didn't matter because I have a reason to feel happy, to feel love, to have courage and to find hope. Breaking my silence to my friends and my loved ones helped me get over the fears that took over my life. 

In my journals I wrote about the feelings of happiness, the reason to live and to be proud of what has happened. I expressed what I felt through a paper and a pencil and since then I realized that having to know yourself gives you a lot of reason to live and not fear about what's going to happen because when there is fear, there is hope. For example, Shawshank redemption, character Andy Duffresne, feared but he never did lose hope on freedom and to fulfill his dream life.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1W_O_iBQgVg

-Kim

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The Different Faces of Hope and Courage

Courage - stay strong and be brave. Hope - stay calm and do not lose what you believe in and what you think is right; those things can come to us in all kinds of ways. We can get it from within or a simple object can give us all that we need. Everyone is different in their  perception of hope and courage. For me I think it is a very good thing to live by these guidelines. I do not think I would be able to do some of the journeys I have accomplished in my lifetime without following these boundaries. Like when I had to go to Vegas to play volleyball when my dad was in the hospital and me traveling such a far distance not knowing what was going to happen. The hope my teammates showed me that things would get better and playing that sport at that moment was what I really needed by getting my mind off it and making an honest effort for not only me but for my coaches and my fellow players. The strength they had was what I was lacking and for them to do that showed me how much impact a team can have on an individual player.

Now social media is a big thing in our day and age. Everything gets put either on Instagram, Snapchat, Twitter or possibly Facebook. Now some of those apps are very old but we need to remember that once something is online it is forever online. You are probably wondering how does this relate to courage and hope and the significance of it? Well, let me tell you to put something on the web takes courage alone to know that there is a good chance everyone around the world can see it. Even if they do not know you, but find your name or account number, it's a risk that most people do not think of. But to myself and maybe others these are one of those things we just do and not really think of the outcome too much. So, for every time you or a friend want to post something like a video, or a picture make sure you trust them. When myself or a friend puts a picture online I have hope that the person posting the picture won't do any harm to it.   

Providing a sense of achievement does not just come in doing something good but overcoming a fear and having strength and will power to deal with the issue that is right in front of us. We can all do that if we so desire. In English 30 we watched a movie called “Shawshank Redemption” and the main character Andy was able to achieve certain things because of his willingness to do so. That is just like the life we all live in today; we can choose to be a part of something greater and work up the hope to get there plus the courage we need to make it happen for ourselves. If there is one message that I can get across to you all, I believe that it is this: we ask for courage and hope a lot more than we think and we use it a lot in times of distress. It is said so often nowadays, that we forget if we really mean to use it in that context but I really encourage that if we understand the true meaning and how it helps our family or society we can make great changes in the years to come.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j7_A_FKCsVc&feature=youtu.be
 The following link shows hope and courage in my opinion because the people he refers to put themselves out there and on the line to change the world and be judged by the entire nation which takes a lot  of hope and courage

-Kendyl

The Search

During this Covid-19 pandemic I was one of the few courageous people that was able to find a job for myself. I was able to get employment at 7-11 stocking shelves. It is quite difficult to find a job with all the risks of the Covid-19 virus. There is the risk of not being able to keep a job because of reduced hours or shutdowns due to the restrictions put in place by our government that is trying to keep us safe. Most places that are offering jobs are considered an essential service, such as grocery stores, gas stations and pet stores. This generally means that people need these businesses to continue operating in order to survive. Also, this generally means exposing you to hundreds of people that may have the virus. That is a huge risk to take that takes lots of courage to face. All these things create a lot of doubts, fears and anxiety of the unknown. Even with all of the doubts and fears I had to muster the courage to find a job. 

I also needed to keep hope in finding a job. There weren't exactly a lot of jobs on the market because of the restrictions in place. I was applying to as many jobs I could hoping that someone would contact me and say that they needed me. I had doubts that anyone would at all. Things were changing from day to day. More and more stores were either closing or laying of staff due to lack of demand, but I had hope that I would find a job. 

https://www.alberta.ca/coronavirus-info-for-albertans.aspx#goa-grid23425

-Katie

Overcoming the Odds

In life we’re told many times by several people we can’t do it, or we’ll never make it and that we have to accept the negative people and accept being told "no" because nobody is ever getting a "yes" all the time. So we take that as motivation to strive and hope for a way to prove them wrong.

I’ve been living in Lethbridge all of my life and have met all kinds of people with all different emotions and attitudes: negative, positive, sad, happy, angry and depressed. Each person I’ve met on my journey here I’ve taken them as either a blessing or a lesson. I’ve learned that people can change up on you at any point in time and that’s the scary thing with life, we can trust and believe all we want, but in the end it really comes down to that person you trust and believe in and if they’re loyal and truthful. 

I’ve been playing hockey for 15 years of my life and it’s the same as I said before, every person I’ve met and played with in this sport is a blessing or a lesson. I’ve always had a goal when I was younger to play up in higher levels of hockey like AA and A and I’ve went through many emotions trying to achieve it. I’ve came across the negative people saying I’d never make it because I'm not this and I’m not that, but never once did I stop. I kept going and I wanted to prove everyone wrong. I stayed up countless nights stressing and worrying and trying to find ways to be better than everyone else, but really the only way to be better than anyone is a good attitude and positive work ethic.

I’ve run into situations in the dressing rooms arguing about skill and not making a team and that’s what I explained in the first part of this, we run into situations in life all the time basically everyday, but hockey has taught me to overcome any of the challenges in my life. My biggest challenge has been overcoming my challenge of my weight. Ever since I’ve been young I’ve always wanted to be the fit kid and the fastest kid in the class, but I never could and I never understood until I got older and realized It’s because I’m a big guy and the others aren’t, so I started wanting to be like them. This is where hockey and my daily life come in because hockey people said I couldn’t make teams because I was too big and slow and you get chirped about it in your daily life for no reason because that’s people, that’s what they do because they see your success or your popularity and try to bring you down to their level. I never wanted to be that low and kept my hopes high to overcome these negative people to see a positive in my life.

Hope is a huge word to describe my journey through all of this because I’ve hoped to escape the people and escape the negativity, but all I truly had to hope for was a positive mindset and hope I could overcome the negative people and negative odds. I hoped for it all and with just as little as hoping for it...it worked. I became the captain of my AA team my first year in AA and I will never forget it. I never once rubbed it into anybody’s face or bragged about it, I just let life go on and let them see my success and hope they’d take my struggle as a lesson. I will always love to tell this story to many because hope is all we need to overcome any obstacles or any negative people or situations we run into in our lives.

-Kadon

Personal Growth

Something I’m passionate about is personal growth. Personal growth is what keeps me going forward every day and it’s what makes me have confidence in myself. When I wake up in the mornings nowadays I look forward to a new day, everyday. I used to wake up feeling like there was no point in trying to do my best because I wasn’t building self growth and I used to blind myself on the things and lies people told me. I wasn’t getting along with my teachers, parents, and friends but as time went I’ve been working on myself more than anything. I stopped caring about the things around me as much as I did before. I can now overcome my fears which is something I would’ve never done before. I believe if everyone worked on personal growth people would get along with others more and there would be less violence in the world. If I didn’t work on personal growth I feel like I'd be a different person than I am now. Personal growth helped me with many things such as maturity. When I get stressed I now know how to manage it and not take it out on others who didn’t do anything to me. I used to make many bad life decisions that weren’t leading me on the right path. I also know how to make the right decisions and I can handle peer pressure well now. I don’t listen to the bad things people tell me, I just do what’s best for myself. I’m still not where I want to be, but everything takes time, and nothing changes overnight. I’m trying to follow my dreams and be anything in life. I’ve had many examples in my life of the type of person I don’t want to grow up and be. Life is short and full of challenges and that is why I believe I need to do my best and not waste my time on trying to be someone I'm really not.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EExCJxdIbMU

- Jonathan

The Bad Guy

We all have that special person that helps us through times of distress. For me it's my Dad, but for so long I was told he was the bad guy when my parents divorced. I believed the lies of “He doesn’t love you” and “He won’t come back for you”. My parents got divorced when I was around the age of nine. My memories of those days are blurred as I took them for granted or just wanted to forget them. Since those lies were planted in my head I can only seem to remember the bad times. The times I was left planted on my bed crying. From the age 9-14 I always saw him as a ‘bad guy’. After my 15th birthday I started to break through the lies and started to get closer to my Dad. We started to have more heart to heart conversations and I started to learn more about him. After a lot of deep conversations he started to teach me more and more life skills that my single mother couldn’t. I continued to want to learn and know more about my Dad so started to run to his house as a stunt to stay longer than the two weekends a month. It took me two months of running to his house for my Mom to finally give in to me moving there full time. After I moved there full time there was a bit of bad blood with my Mom, as she took it as betrayal where I saw it as a chance to grow. Even with the bad blood my Dad was there to help and guide me on how to deal with it correctly and fairly for both parties. Without my Dad guiding me through this stressful time I would still be dealing with it to this day. After living with my Father for two years now I still continue to learn things that will help me for the rest of my life.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yERildSsWxM

-Ethan

The Courage & Hope That Will Not Disappoint Us

It seems like whenever we have big dreams fear will always come knocking on our door, stopping us from moving forward and killing the dreams inside.

It took me a long time to finally realize that fear is just a small shadow appearing to be super big.   

Growing up in Israel I used to fear a lot whenever the enemies would throw bombs on us trying to kill everyone in the country. It was hard especially whenever we’d hear about bombs in the nearby cities, we would think that maybe we are next and although there were times of peace, the fear inside stopped us from enjoying the moment. That fear consumed every part of  my life to the point were I couldn’t see anything good in my life; I thought that there was no way I'd ever get to live a good life, or I would wonder if I would live at all. My other greatest fear was the future. What will happen, where am I going to be, or am I ever going to succeed and get out of this life? But God has commanded us to be hopeful and courageous. In the book of Joshua God says: “Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid. Do not be discouraged, for the Lord your God will be with you where you go”(Joshua 1:9). The bible promised that if we have hope then our hope will not disappoint us or put us to shame.

Everything I feared in the past didn’t happen. I am alive and peaceful and although I still don’t know what the future holds, I know that God holds the future, and he is the Beginning and the End.  I am encouraging everyone to have the courage to believe that the best is always yet to come and to have hope that their dreams can come to pass. Fear is just "False Evidence Appearing Real", but faith is "the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen". We may not see a way out, but God can part the sea and make a way for us. My happiness came back the moment I stopped fearing everything and trusted God more because hope and courage bring joy and happiness. I believe that the best life a person could have is a life full of hope and courage.

-Diana

Fighting With My Monsters

A monster is a person who tells us we are not good enough or we have no purpose in life. In life 

we all have a monster we run from. These monsters could be found anywhere, they could be on 
our phone through social media, they could be in our schools and they could be even found in 
our own homes, but the only way we can overcome these monsters is through hope and a
courage. If we have courage we can stand up for ourselves to tell these monsters to go away 
or to stop, to tell them that we have a purpose in life and we are good enough. All of these examples remind me of my personal experience with a monster, a monster who told me I could never play with my friends  in my own neighbourhood, a monster twho stole my bike twice and a monster who beat me up for who I was. This monster was known as the neighbourhood bully. A bully who I always tried to impress, but it always ended up with me getting a bloody nose or running back home into my moms arms with tears rolling down my face.  I thought it was impossible to make peace with my monster, my bully, but one day my Mom sat me down and told me about a thing called hope and courage, well not really, she told me about making peace and about telling the bully how I feel and how he makes me feel. But I told my Mom, "He won't listen to me, and he will probably just beat me up again". My Mom replied with, "just have hope and you will get what you want”. The next day I gathered up the courage to go over to the bully's door and knock.  I was greeted with a, “What the hell do you want?” With all the courage in me I told him how I felt; I told him that I was tired of him always beating up on me. I told him how I couldn't even make a friend in the neighbourhood because of him. I told him that every night I went to sleep I cried because of him. He looked at me with a disappointed face and I asked him, "Mason can we just be friends?" He looked around and then he looked back at his Mom and then he asked me if  I wanted to go for a bike ride. I believe that if I didn't have the courage  to go and knock on his door I wouldn't be able to make peace with my bully and if my Mom didn't tell me to have hope I wouldn't be able to write this story.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7rGtYs8cRhs

-Chandler

My passion isn’t necessarily something that I searched for, or something that I decided to like. I knew this passion was something that was always a part of me. It was so apparent to me at a young age that this is what drives me, what sets me apart from everyone else and what brings genuine happiness to my life. Since I was born I have been attached to my dad, and he had raised me to be whoever I wanted to be. When I was five I wanted to be in ballet, so he let me try a ballet class. When I was 11, I wanted to play basketball, so I played basketball. I even decided to curl for a year..but none of those things worked out, all I wanted to do was go camping so we could play in the mud on our quads, come home and wash our cars in the driveway and drive around until the sun came up. This was my passion. 

Once a year, every summer Street Machine Weekend comes around. It is my favourite weekend of the entire year, and the best part about being off of school for two months was this weekend. Every July my dad and I would clean up our cars and get ready to have the best night of the summer. We had so much fun watching the classic cars from the 60’s doing burnouts with no remorse as they cruised past a cop, or the Japanese cars from the 90’s drifting around corners and making everyone grin; the teenagers caused all the ruckus past midnight illegally street racing and cruising around with friends. 

These nights had such an influence on me that now as an adult, all I do is dream about building the fastest, loudest and most beautiful cars to show off to the crowds in the warm summer evenings. I’m proud of my passion, it is my entire life, not something I do on the weekends or occasionally throughout the year. This is something that I want to do for the rest of my life, and pass on to my children the same way my dad passed it on to me.

https://youtu.be/8p3NdHcceLw

-Cassie

Fear Does't Identify You

I will be explaining fear and how it can affect a person. Throughout time I have had many fears: speaking in front of people, talking to new people, or even getting up and walking in front of people who are sitting - all results of my anxiety that I still struggle with. If I didn’t have the courage I wouldn’t be able to work past it.  Some days are tougher than others, to the point where I can’t even get out of bed. Involved in fear is having the hope that nothing bad will come of it, the hope that I will eventually get over it, and that it doesn’t define the type of person I am. Fear is not a personality trait. Being afraid of heights let’s say doesn’t just make you a person afraid of heights. Fear holds people back from so many things and in today’s society, people will poke fun at you for your fears if what you’re afraid of is viewed as “stupid” or “childish” by others. No fear is childish or stupid, because you cannot control it. For example, I have a fear of ferrets, and anytime the word gets mentioned I start stuttering and impulsively sweating.  Fears can spring from anything; my ferret fear sprouted from a nightmare I had one time, and yes people make fun of me for it but again I can’t control it. Some people’s fears are much more serious than a fear of an animal but no one’s fears should be viewed as less important. 

https://www.takingcharge.csh.umn.edu/impact-fear-and-anxiety

-Alyssa

Saying "No"

Throughout my life I’ve thought about my future, and through my eyes it looks fantastic but if I want the future I always dream about, I have to work tremendously hard for it. This is where I need all of the courage possible because it’s really hard to keep yourself on track, things in life might go sideways for a bit, but with courage I find myself bringing things back. Courage is key when it comes to self perseverance. I was going out every chance I could and spending way too much money on things that didn’t make me happy in the long run, but only brought me joy for a brief moment.

  Once I realized what I was doing with my life it took courage to say “no I can't go out tonight” to my friends. It’s hard at first, but once I got into the routine of not spending money I was able to save and buy something that brought me joy everyday; I bought myself a vehicle. Having courage to say “no” brought me true happiness, and having hope is the most important thing when it comes to accomplishing a goal.

 Without hope it’s a lot easier to just give up on things. I had hoped that I’d save up enough money in order to buy myself a vehicle that made me smile every time I turned the key. I live my life with these two important rules: whenever I go out I just remember what my hard earned money can be spent on that would truly make me happy, and that with courage and hope I am making my dream future a reality one day at a time.

-Adrien

Struggles

Growing up I was surrounded by people who were bad influences on me and who were the kind of people who took the easy way out. Growing up I was surrounded by gangs, drugs, violence, but I never got into those kind of things due to my parents and how they told me the real side of life. My dad told me his story of how he grew up as a kid who didn’t know how to speak English, and became someone who was fluent and to me was the smartest man alive. He told me that life is not easy for our people and that we need to bust our asses to get by in this world. My mom gave up and dropped out of high school. She grew up as someone surrounded by gangs, drugs, and violence, but the way she handle it was that so different from my dad. She gave up and regretted it years later. She told herself that she would have no future, no dreams, and not even kids to call her own. She told me that if I give up then what's the point of having dreams. My parents told me if I want to give up then they’ll let my or if I want to I could finish high school and be the first one in my mom’s family to graduate from high school. That would mean that I could be a role model for my little cousins, my little sister, and my little brother. I made the decision to go to high school and finish with a diploma. I started in K&E and busted my ass to get into mainstream classes. I worked to the point where I was actually sleep deprived from studying but when I finally got into grade twelve I was so happy I even remember picking up my mom and running around with her. I went into grad twelve with four classes and I’m writing this on my last day of class because Mrs. Gardner got mad at me and forced me to! So please, what ever you do don’t sleep in her class.

-Keenan Black Plume

Thinking About Myself Using Courage and Hope

In this piece I will be reflecting on myself and my hockey career. It was hard for me to express myself online when I was in middle school and in person because I was unsure of how I looked and  other people looked at me and thought of me. The people who I thought were judging me were like the monsters to me and I had to get through the monsters by worrying about what I thought and not what others thought. When I got to high school it got a lot easier because I didn’t care what other people thought of me and wasn’t scared of being myself because all of my friends accepted who I was from the start, I just had to learn to get the courage and hope to accept myself.  With the courage and hope that I got in high school about my personal appearance, I began to not worry about that and started to worry about my life, like my schooling, work and how I was going to make myself better for myself and not care what other people want for me.

With my hockey career I was always the type to be super shy when I was younger and I only really had a few friends or even one friend, but recently I have opened myself up and tried to be friends with everyone on my hockey teams that I have been on. Doing this made me build my character to what it is today and make better friends and make my friend group a lot bigger than what it was. Hockey was my passion and nothing could ever stop me to pursue that passion. I never would have done this without the courage and hope to push me towards this goal of making new friends and being more open to others and even myself.

In my journals in courage and hope I reflect on how people have made an impact and on me to strive for whatever I want in life. My parents for example have been my biggest supporters like, when I wanted to go to Picture Butte High School for my last semester of high school, they were so supportive of what I wanted from it and where I wanted to graduate. I wanted to go to school in BC, but changed my mind to stay home for school and they were so supportive for both of those decisions. In the TED talk that I put in my blog the speakers says “write what you’re feeling, tell the truth, write like nobody's watching” I can relate to this a lot because I feel like in my earlier days in middle school, I felt like people were always judging and watching my every move, so that made me lie around things and not be truthful about who I really was. As time came in high school I came to realize that I don’t care what people have to say about me and started to tell the truth about who I really was and stopped caring about if someone was really watching my every move and did whatever it took to make myself happy and not others happy.

Susan David: The gift and power of emotional courage ... - TED.com

https://www.ted.com/talks/susan_david_the_gift_and_power_of_emotional_courage

-Scott Oosterbroek

The Masks We Wear

Why do we wear a mask? Maybe because we are afraid of what society will think of our true selves. Society has taught us that to be vulnerable is to be weak, but this is not true. When we remove the masks we begin to feel a true sense of purpose and gain the courage to say “this is who I am if you don’t like me for who I am then deal with it because I am not gonna change for anyone.” We wear these masks in hope for acceptance from society because we are told that only cowards are vulnerable not the strong, but it actually is the other way around it is the strong who are vulnerable and the weak who hide their weaknesses. When we make a mistake is is our true selves that get blamed not the mask because we become the mask and when this happens reality will hit you like a .50 caliber bullet in the chest (which will hurt a lot) when your mask is removed. But when it is gone you will be able to feel true hope and gain true courage which one lacks when one is wearing a mask because fantasy and reality never mix. I remember removing my mask and it did hurt and was kind of a wake up call for my true self and a challenge because of people who tried to force the mask back on.

The link below tells how one can be one step closer to happiness
When one removes that mask and shows their true colors.  

http://feelhappiness.com/take-off-your-social-mask

-Liam Wolfe

Clouded By Doubts

A few more months from now and I will be graduating from high school. I’ve heard some of my friends lay out their future plans. Some will be pursuing university degrees, while others are ready to learn technical skills that interest them, and some will be  working for a year before pursuing something else. I look at them and I’ve come to realize that I don’t really know what to do after June. My parents have suggested to pursue a career in healthcare and I have started the applications. I agreed since right now I am in a limbo and I can’t really say what I’d like to do after high school. All I know is I want to attend a university or a college and earn a degree. The future scares me and the lyrics from the song "Whisper":  “Well I’ve got open eyes and an open door. But I don’t know what I’m searching for” sums up my feelings. Listening to my parents argue on why a career in healthcare is good makes sense, but is this what I want? Do I even know what I want? If I am being honest with myself what truly scares me is after I get a degree will I be successful in my field? Will I come close to being as successful as my father? Will I be earning enough to provide for a family? Will I be able to give my children a comfortable life like my parents gave me? My mom says I am too young to be worrying about those things, but when I think about  the future these questions always enter my mind and it truly scares me. She is always saying that with age comes maturity and when it does come I will be ready. But will I? My dad once told me: “ All I want you to be is to be a better man than me.” My parents believe in me so much, but I always doubt myself and just like how the song says: “well it’s hard to find a reason, when all you have is doubts.” As I am writing down my thoughts about the future I have come to realize that maybe if I doubt myself less then I might be able to see a brighter future ahead of me. Why fear a page when it has not even been written yet? My future is what I make out of it. I am the author of my future and I will make sure that all the pages are written well because I believe in myself.       

-Jacob Villar

You Need Hope to Have Passion

I'm a passionate about my job because it gives me money which then I can use for my personal uses such as my phone bill, gas and food. My job is not easy, but can be a good thing for me because it makes gives me hope and the courage to do my job well. Some difficulties is my schedule because I work on the weekdays and weekends 5 days a week and I only get 2 days off; I always feel tired and find myself no time to do homework or finish my assignments, but I try my best to do all my homework even though I am tired. I overcome this by asking for less hours and try to do my homework, even if I have to stay up till 12am. I am able to have the courage to motivate myself into doing what I need I am able to do. Another passion of mine is playing the drums, it is something that keeps be busy during my free time. There are also difficulties when playing such as trying to figure out how to play a new song or trying to learn a new beat. The way I overcome it is by simply practicing, like they say practice makes perfect. In work I want to do my best and show other people what I'm capable of and exceed expectations. I hope that one day everything I do pays off and I'm able to have a better job.

https://www.businessinsider.com/i-asked-5000-people-how-they-stay-passionate-at-work-2018-1

This link is about 5000 people who stay passionate about their jobs.

-Antonio Jaimes

Even if Fear Consumes You, You Don't Have to Overcome it to Help Others

When I was younger I was not the bravest kid, I never had much courage and I was never really the type of person to help people who were in danger because I was too scared to do anything about it. One time when I was a kid I used to live in a townhouse area and behind the townhouses there was this railway there and behind the railway was this little forest. After school or late evening kids would go in to the little forest and that was where everyone played hide and seek or just went there to get away from things. There were always people there and everyone who was there was always friendly and helpful to one another, but one evening me and some friends went to hang out there and everything was well. We were all playing, laughing, and having a fun times like friends do, but as it got later some of them had to leave and go home. Slowly no one was there but one of my friends and myself because all of my other friends had already left to go home. No one stayed this late because when people stayed late they would always end up going home injured or sometimes kids would even go missing; we knew it was not a good idea to stay there very late. Nevertheless, my friend and I decided to stay a little longer, but as we were going to leave we started hearing footsteps in the bushes, so we got a little creeped out and scared. We started to walk faster, but the faster we started to get the faster the footsteps followed. At this point we got so scared that we thought it was a good idea to start running, but as soon as we started to run we realized that we were being chased by this big dog that looked like it was hungry and rabid. The dog was still a good distance away from us so we knew if we ran fast enough that we could get away from it, but as we were running away from the dog my friend's foot got caught on this root that was sticking out of the ground and he ended up tripping over it and spraining his ankle. At this moment I was so scared that I didn’t really know what to do, so I continued to run away instead of helping him out. I saw the way out so I thought to myself that if I kept running I could get away safely, but then I felt a surge of guilt go through me. Normally I’m not one who is brave enough to go and help people because I’m just too scared to even try to help them, but this friend was someone who was really close to me and after feeling the guilt of almost leaving him behind I knew that I couldn’t just sit there and not help him because he had helped me through so much. I ended up running faster then before just to have time to help lift him up on my back and run with him out of there. We managed to get out of the forest, but we noticed that the dog was nowhere in sight even after peeking in to see if he was there. The dog had just disappeared, and we never knew what happened to the dog and we never did end up going back to the forest again. My friend ended up being okay, but he just had to walk around with a cast for a while. This was the first time that I ever had the courage to get up and go help someone who was in need of it, after that day I have tried my best to help people in any way I can even if it’s something small.

-Stephen Harper