Coming from a low-income family, I've had to mature very quickly at a young age. Striving to have it all, I started working full-time at my parents' cleaning business while enrolled in school at the age of twelve to pay for the things that I wanted. My parents were the giving type but also wanted me to know what it was like to be an adult and how to provide for myself and others. After the recession in 2008, my parents were forced to start their own business after losing their jobs and maintaining a full kitchen became nearly impossible for them. I remember vividly of having only commodities to eat on for a straight four months and my creativity sparked when I was forced to look up recipes with such and such ingredients. Some nights I ate sleep for dinner but I am forever grateful for the devastation the recession did because I would not be the same person I am today. Around the age of fifteen, I started working my first actual taxed job at McDonald's and many weeks I had to give full paychecks to my parents so we were able to keep our electricity and water on. Later on in life, I would accrue the same situation, only worse this time.
I just moved back home in October of 2017 and within two months of being home, my family was being evicted for the first time. We were forced to move out after receiving a thirty day notice and on that last week, I had to help pack and move while trying to balance studying and taking finals for the end of the semester. I would later fail a class which led me to be suspended from the University of Nebraska Lincoln for two semesters. The second time came when we were evicted in September of 2018 just after enrolling at the University of Nebraska Omaha.
I got my own apartment and after trying to help my parents with their struggling debt and instability of maintaining utilities and rent, I started to work more and more. The entire fall semester of 2018 is a blur to me now but I worked full time overnights from 10PM to 5AM, started class at 9AM and would end my last class for the day at 2PM Monday through Thursday, I learned the skills of being an entrepreneur by picking up hours doing SkipTheDishes (third-party food delivery app) from 3PM to 8PM. Crazy right? Naps and water was how I was able to survive. If I would have known things would develop into what they would have when I was much younger, I would have told my parents to stop. Stop spending on unnecessary items and eating at extravagant places and invest their money into the cleaning business or anything else as opposed to starting a business out of desperation. I also would have read more on financial literacy and personal finance so I could help my parents in their financial crisis.
Having the ability to appreciate the struggle and the things you have in life at the moment will prevail you through any obstacle. I tend to go with the flow and think ahead as opposed to being content and pondering on past events. I usually expect problems of anything so I tend to think ahead on solutions to expected problems. |
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In the video, Steve Lacy speaks about working and appreciating what you have and finding the potential in everything and achieving your goals with it. I tend to look at problems the same way. I have encountered most problems that we are able to encounter in a work space or in any space in fact so I look at problems as small goals that I am needing to conquer.
Looking at the negatives as positives has really helped push me through everything. Things usually happen for a reason and if you're dealt a certain hand of cards, it's because God knows you are able to overcome and play those cards to your advantage. Being on the low, I have found that most people get the most creative ideas to go on the up and create their own destiny. Improvement is always important to me so working towards becoming an efficient leader by staying focused and not being distracted at various moments can really push me towards greatness.
Six Thinking Hats
After taking the Six Thinking Hats quiz, it suggested that my top thinking hat is in the blue area, which says that I am a person who takes initiative and leads a group. My second and third results were very close behind, having yellow at second and green at third. I agree with these results because I do not like to waste time and regardless if a situation is sour, I try my best to see the light and solve it. As a leader, I like to think outside of the box on situations and find minimal but great solutions to a problem because too many choices leads people to be indecisive and take too long to make a decision, whereas I think of a solution and instantly try to solve it. Compared to my Gallup Strengths, they are not too comparable because my strengths deal with relationship building and being a restorative person while my thinking hat suggests that I am a person who controls situations and is able to think for others when they are not able to.