So we all have our favorite quotes whether those end up being in a picture form or something you heard at a motivational speaker event. I know my favorite quote is: "Superman fell down, but he got back up." This has always stuck with me since my freshman year when I came to campus for an early start program and Ryan Penneau was the person they brought in for that year and this year. It really spoke to me with a lot of the issues I had come up starting my senior year of high school, but I understand it doesn't have the same impact on others. These 10 quotes I have found though typically impact everyone in some way because they remind us that not everyone deals with the same battles but we can still support them.
1. Be Kind for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle. ~ Plato
This was always posted in my high school and I see it all over Pinterest and the internet but it is so true. Everyone is fighting a battle that may be easy for you but hard for them.
2. Strive for progress, not perfection. ~unknown
This is something that some will fully connect with and others won't. I try to remember this on days where I'm like "this needs to be perfect and exact" and it's not turning out that way. Everything is a progression and perfection is something that will honestly probably never be reached. I, personally, try not to use the words perfect or perfection because to me they are not exactly achievable. I strive to progress and do my best and if I tried and did my best then I'm okay with that.
3. Experience is a brutal teacher. But you learn. My God. Do you learn. ~CS Lewis
We've all been there at some point as college students and adults. We learned a hard lesson through experience but we learned. It may have taken a few of those experiences for us to actually learn the lesson but we learned it for sure.
4. If you see someone without a smile, give them one of yours. ~Dolly Parton
If this isn't true enough. A simple smile shown to someone you don't know or barely know could make their day. The same goes with a compliment. They could be having a rough day but that one moment will stick with them the rest of the day. I always have a goal of complimenting 5 people, that I don't know, every day.
5. Do what you can, with what you have, where you are. ~ Theodore Roosevelt
You're in college. You're given sometimes less than ideal projects or challenges. You're like "how am I going to pull this off" and you feel frustrated about it. It's okay. Get creative. Get the basics down and use what you have even if you don't have much.
6. Every day may not be good, but there is something good in every day. ~ unknown
This goes back to number 4. Your day may not be the best but find the little good things that happened. Maybe you failed a paper but you found $5 in your jeans. Yeah, you still failed a paper and finding money doesn't make up for it really but you found $5 in your pocket. Look for the little things.
7. You're always one decision away from a totally different life. ~unknown
Maybe college was that one decision and it totally changed everything. Or maybe it wasn't but you want to change something. You're one thought, one moment, one reason away from a different life. You can do it, you just have to make that leap.
8. 1 year = 365 opportunities. ~unknown
It's true. Every day is a new opportunity. It's a day to make a change within yourself. It's a day to make a change within your community. It's a day to do a lot of things if you look for the opportunity. Opportunities are all around us but we have to look for them because only a small handful actually drops into our lap.
9. Get up every morning and remind yourself "I CAN do this." ~Unknown
This for me is something I do have to do every single day. I won't lie, some days I really don't believe myself when I do say it, but then I make it through the day sometimes with no bumps or small bumps or really big bumps, but I do make it through. We are our biggest critics and we can be so hard on ourselves over the smallest of things. Be kind to yourself, remind yourself you can do it, and maybe try to remind those struggling that they can do it too.
10. Never stop learning because life never stops teaching. ~unknown
Ain't that the truth. Really, though. Some hate learning. Like seriously they hate it but we're learning every day even if we drop out of college or if we've graduated many times over and have our Ph.D. We continually learn things every day, so don't try to stop it. Take it in with open arms and actually learn.
11. Don't be afraid to fail, be afraid to not try. ~unknown
Take failure as a learning experience. It can be hard to become accustomed to the idea that failure is more than just failure but a way to grow because we're expected to do well if that's what our past shows of us but many don't realize that to do well, you must fail and grow from it. I learn from failure every single day. I'm an art major, it's what we do. We fail but we learn more than we succeed. But when we succeed, it's probably because we combined all of the things we learned from failure into our end product. We, as people, aren't born holding a pencil or a paintbrush or knowing how the human mind works. We are born with the potential but we have to keep trying when failure happens.
12. Believe in yourself. Be You. ~unknown
13. People will forget what you say, they'll forget what you do, but people will never forget how you made them feel. ~Maya Angelou
Be that small smile, be the small compliment. They won't even know your name but they'll remember that feeling the next time they see you.
14. Broken crayons still color. ~unknown
You may be down, you may be having a difficult time right now, but you are still you. You are still able to do so many things. Sometimes starting at rock bottom helps you reach things you never thought you'd reach. You will be okay. You will grow so much from what may be going on in your life right now. I believe in you.
I hope at least a few of these quotes remind you or help you as you carry on about your day. I hope they take away some of the overloads of blogs or pictures or newscast feeds of the election because it will still probably be talked about for the next few weeks. I really believe that on occasion we need to be reminded of things like this because we may be down or know someone who is down and we want to help them or ourselves.
