Words of Wisdom from Michelle Obama

Michelle Obama’s memoir, Becoming, is truly inspirational and is full wisdom and life lessons, and here are a 11 selected quotes from the book that I loved the most.

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1. “Your story is what you have, what you will always have. It is something to own.”

I often struggle with my own story, as I am sure others would too at times. We all go through ups and downs, great moments, embarrassing moments, and hardships. And, through it all, we guard our story like it’s a dirty secret, something we would get rid of if we could. But, as I grow I am realizing we are meant to own our stories, share our stories — that’s where both our soul and human connection blooms. Once we share we see how unique yet similar we all are, how relatable our life experiences are, and I truly believe that’s how we find our tribe.

2. “The sound of people trying became the soundtrack to our life.”

This reiterates something that I have realized recently, the critical value of early lessons in life. While each of us will have something unique in our upbringing, there are some core values that decide the virtue of character — whether a person believes in hard work or shortcuts, whether they are challenged and motivated by failure or blocked by it. When Michelle writes this, I look back on my childhood. I got a message often which was to work hard and become successful, even when the definition of success wasn’t clear — but one thing was clear that I have to work hard to be something, to achieve something. The way I see it, it is very different from trying. Trying for the sake of trying, finding direction, learning new things can be a great thing, but if we learn that trying has to be followed by a reward, it can be catastrophic when we don’t get that desired reward in the end. The first major failure you encounter will have that power to shake your faith in hard work and the power that we had placed in it with every passing day of our lives growing up.

3. “Time, as far as my father was concerned, was a gift you gave to other people.”

I feel that it’s great to have learned this lesson early in life because time really is the most precious gift we can give to anyone. If you choose to hang out with your friends one weekend, that could mean so much more than any gift you can send their way. Of course, people are different and have different love languages, including gift-giving and receiving that can be really sweet... But with time you realize that time is a limited and precious resource and if spent well it can be the best gift truly.

4. “Even a happy marriage can be a vexation; it is a contract best renewed and renewed again, even quietly and privately- even alone.”

This realization she gets from her mother’s confession (that she had thought about leaving her husband at one point). I get the impression that Michelle didn’t dig too much into questions surrounding this question, or if she did she might have chosen to keep them private, which I respect. When people get married and have friends who are married, so many of the conversations are around relationships and husbands with everyone trying to navigate the complexity that marriage is, and probably wishing to find that elusive destination of the happy marriage — one which we have been hearing about dreaming about all our lives. So, the question here is… does that destination really exist? If not, wouldn’t we be better off with an acceptance of reality, where we all do our best... Wouldn’t we be more grateful for the things in our life if we weren’t constantly looking at a faraway horizon? This quote is like a reality check — even the best marriages can have bad days, months, years. It requires renewing that contract over and over for it to stay a happy marriage.

5. “What’s better for us? Do we settle for the world as it is or do we work for the world as it should be?”

That’s a question to ask ourselves every day. Before we realize it, busyness turns into non-participation and that further becomes complacency. We need to check in with ourselves once in a while, to assess what kind of world we want to be in and if our present situation aligns. If it does not we can take steps to bring about change, starting where we can.

6. “Almost home is not a Geo-locator but rather a state of mind.“

When Michelle asked Barack about his arrival time, more often than not the response she got was, “almost home.” She would end up waiting hours sometimes before he would make home — he would sometimes squeeze a meeting or a gym visit in that time. It took her a while to come to the realization that ‘almost home’ means nothing and gives her no information, and she is not helping herself by going along with it. She learned to set boundaries and not wait without an end time.

7. “I began to see how I’d been stoking the most negative parts of myself, caught up in the notion that everything was unfair and then assiduously collecting evidence to feed that hypothesis.”

We all do this, probably — negative thoughts have these patterns where they keep repeating in our head, and before we know those thoughts turn into feelings, and at that point, they are stronger than any truth. We look for evidence to feed into our confirmation bias, which leads us to overlook any positive that may be happening in the parallel.

8. “When you aren’t being listened to, why wouldn’t you get louder? If you’re written off as angry or emotional, doesn’t that just cause more of the same?”

As a woman, I really relate to this. So many times, in hard conversations, we are called out as emotional (translate: irrational) and therefore it’s implied that they are incapable of reasonable conversations. Who decided, and when, that emotions and rationale are mutually exclusive? Both of those are normal brain functions, they why is there a gender bias in conversations — both personal and professional?

9. “There’s an awkwardness that comes with just about any formally arranged meeting, but in my experience, it’s something you need to consciously work your way past.”

I am socially awkward, which increases in proportion to the size of the group. There have been phases where social anxiety made me cancel plans, or limit myself to a select few people. It feels good to read this because it’s a reminder that what I feel is not unique and I am not alone in that. Maybe there are others who are struggling, too, and it makes me more empathetic and outgoing.

10. “Failure is a feeling long before it becomes an actual result. It’s the vulnerability that breeds with self-doubt and then is escalated, often deliberately, by fear.”

Fear makes us fail long before we actually do. It holds us back. It stops us from trying. It clouds our minds and judgment. It affects our productivity and efficiency. In challenging times, it may be helpful to remember this — that fear is a natural response, and we can push past it to try new things, follow our dreams, and achieve our goals.

11. “This may be the fundamental problem of caring a lot about what others think: It can put you on the established path — the my-isn’t-that-impressive path — and keep you there for a long time.”

Peer pressure can make us dig a well for ourselves, and depending on how long we have spent digging, it may start to feel like home. It can become our comfort zone. It’s not easy to break out of that, but it’s still easier than living a life not true to ourselves.

What are your favorite quotes from this book?

If you have not read this book yet, I would absolutely recommend it. I truly loved reading the book, and also enjoyed the audiobook version of it — so much that it was the first book for my podcast discussion.