The Light We Carry: Overcoming in Uncertain Times

by Michelle Obama

Barack and I had always tried to operate on the principles of hope and hard work, choosing to overlook the bad in favor of the good, believing that most of us shared common goals, and that progress could be made and measured, however incrementally, over time.

What’s feeding my soil? What’s helping to block the weeds? Am I cultivating both the small and the tall?

I think it’s always worth asking yourself: Am I afraid because I’m in actual danger, or is it simply because I’m staring newness in the face?

if you try to keep your children from feeling fear, you’re essentially keeping them from feeling competence, too.

Your fearful mind is almost always trying to seize the steering wheel and change your course. Its whole function is to rehearse catastrophe, scare you out of opportunity, and throw rocks at your dreams. It enjoys having you flooded and doubtful. Because then you’re more likely to stay home on your couch, nice and passive, taking no risks at all. Which means that defying your fear almost always involves defying a part of yourself.

The unknown is where possibility glitters.

Researchers at the University of Virginia once set out to explore a certain theory about friendship. They strapped heavy backpacks onto a group of volunteers and one by one positioned each person in front of a big hill, as if they were going to climb it. Each volunteer was asked to estimate how steep it was. Half of them stood alone in front of the hill; the other half stood next to someone they’d identified as a friend. And consistently, those who were with a friend viewed the hill as less steep, the climb ahead less difficult. When people who’d been friends a long time stood in front of the hill, the results became even more pronounced: The slope only seemed to flatten out more. This is the power of having others alongside you. It’s a reason to tend to your friends.