So today is the last day of an internship that I did. I was an intern at Spondulics TV and FPP coalition. During the internship, we spent four weeks making Financial edutainment short films. We learned about editing, how to properly use a camera, how to make storyboards and basically the whole production process. Do I want to go into the film industry? No, not at all. I have no plans of going into the film industry. I used to want to be a filmmaker or at least make short films. I might pursue it later as a side hobby, but right now…no.

Anyway, during that internship, we learned many things, such as financial literacy, professionalism, and how to build a resume, basic things that I feel like every young person should know. It was a paid internship so I guess you could say I was being paid to learn about things that can benefit me in the long run. And to be honest, I consider myself privileged for being given the opportunity to learn about these things. 

But among all of those guest speakers there was one speaker in particular that stood out to me. He didn’t have a presentation or anything, he just brought himself. And what he said really shifted my mindset. 

If I remember correctly, one of the other interns asked him about overcoming obstacles or something along the lines of that. He told us that the only thing that is stopping us from succeeding is ourselves. 

He’s not the only person that I’ve heard the saying from. My mother has taught me this. So many other guest speakers and so many other influential people have taught me this, but for some reason, it did not click until that day. I didn’t really understand until that moment. I was like, “Wait, I’m really stopping my own self from succeeding.” 

When a guest speaker tells an audience something, everyone interprets it differently. I’m going to share what I understood from that phrase.

It’s so easy to place the blame on someone else and to never consider yourself as being part of the problem, or just being the problem in itself. When you are self-aware and when you consider yourself to be part of the issue in a situation, it’s like you’re hurting your ego almost. “Oh I’ll never be the problem, it was him all along, it was her all along, I never did anything.” 

This mindset is so damaging because it stops you from walking into your purpose and being your best self. If you stick with the “victim mentality” and you constantly blame other people for your mistakes, you will never fully examine yourself. It will be hard to see yourself laid out on a table and look at what needs to be fixed and improved on.

Let’s say you have a hard time keeping friends or relationships and every occurrence seems to be the same thing. If you keep blaming those people for “doing you dirty,” you’ll never grow.  Once you own up to your mistakes and try to do better from there, things will change in your life. It’s your responsibility to own up to your mistakes to see where you went wrong.