Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Kaleb Zaloga
Professor Dewey
ENG101 13463
27 February 2019
This I Believe
A word that I used to rarely say to people, is now something I use to have control over
my life. The word is such a strong word that it influences all decisions in your life. It is one of
the biggest choices you can make as a person, and it takes a lot of self control. The word that I
am speaking of is no. I believe that the word no can truly impact your life in a positive way.
I used to be someone that would always be there for someone no matter what. It did not
matter if that person was there for me, if I cared about them I was there for them. This attitude
made me feel very negative about myself, making me feel like I wasn’t good enough for these
people to care about my feelings. I felt that everyone hated me and that I was only here for others
gain, like a pawn in a chess game. This caused a spew of mental problems that I still deal with,
things like depression and anxiety, that I deal with daily. There was a certain point, right before I
graduated high school, when I realized that I should not be pushed around like this. I was feeling
so walked over and empty that there was no motivation to do anything in life, so I decided that I
At first this concept of fixing myself was very difficult and I thought that I would lose
everyone around me, but I realized that school was ending and I could start fresh. To do this I
had to remove the negative people from my life, which was pretty easy because I wouldn’t be
seeing them everyday anyway. Once I got through that step next was making more time for
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myself, small things like going to buy coffee or buying a shirt I really like. The majority of the
process was about self love, but also learning how to say no to people when I don’t wanna do
something or it doesn’t make me feel good. It is a big learning curve but something you learn
over time, and a lot of the process I was by myself not trusting other people. Once I finally got to
the point where I start meeting new people, I still had to take my time and figure out how to deal
It definitely took time but I finally think I can make the right decisions to make myself
happy. Sometimes those decisions aren’t always what other people want but it’s not their
decision to make. This is your life and sometimes the right decision to make, is no.