What’s Your Unfair Advantage?

“Hi Anna, piece of advice for an average Jane with not so great self esteem, please?”

My Dearest Bad Biddie,

As part of the now-defunct Presidential Fitness Program, I was required to run a timed mile every year during grade school. A mile may not seem like very much, but for a below-average student athlete (“athlete” is probably generous) like me, I spent most years, unsuccessfully, wondering how I could evade this test. If memory serves, on average, I clocked in at an excruciating twelve-minute mile each time. After graduating high school, I spent the next four years in college leading a fairly sedentary lifestyle, unless you count binge drinking coupled with drunk dancing in stilettos a sport. If I had allowed this version of myself to be the only version of myself to ever exist, I would have never started running in my mid-twenties, fueled by a slowing metabolism and a desire to see if Elle Woods was right about exercise giving you endorphins.

Moreover, if I had settled for the idea of who I was at twenty-two, I would have never have even entered the lottery to run the NYC Marathon when I was twenty-seven, much less run it. While much of who we are is determined at birth, I have found in life that a great deal more is born out of the choices we make and our ability to challenge the imaginary boundaries we’ve set for our own capabilities. There is no better way to live than to prove yourself wrong – to make what was once your delusion a reality.

I am sorry for whatever external forces in your life led you to define yourself as an average Jane with not-so-great-self-esteem, because, although I don’t know anything about you beyond the sentence you wrote me, I do know that none of us are born lacking self-esteem, we are taught it. But, just as you were taught, perhaps subconsciously, to view yourself with dirt-colored glasses, you can teach yourself how to consciously strip them off. Everyone is born with an unfair advantage, some of us just never learn how to harness it. I hope you have the courage to try, fail and try again enough so that you may one day discover what parts of you that remain even a mystery to yourself at present. Let your current feelings of inadequacy fuel your future greatness.

Love,
Your internet hype woman