“it doesn’t matter how deeply you care about justice. You can’t do anything if you’re weak.”

This line hit home the first moment I was exposed to it. When I look back at my life, I see exactly the person this quote is describing. I carried with me the burden of every injustice I knew about. I made angry comments on forums and stream chat communities, desperately putting my two cents into never ending threads. What I didn’t realize at the time, was that I was weak mentally and physically, and it showed. Most of my attention was pointed outwards, so I rarely ever addressed my own weaknesses and behaviors.

In hindsight, a core part of my mentality shift was acknowledging that I was too weak financially, physically, and mentally to accomplish my goals. I also realized that pretty much all the time I spent looking outwards to solve my problem was a waste of time. For the first time I started looking first at improving myself, then influencing change from there.

Another reason this line stood out to me was because the internal shift I mentioned above led to me actually being strong in some areas. Because it’s so recent, it’s easy for me to see that I was weak in some areas before, but now I am much stronger than I used to be. There are also more natural opportunities to share my experience and knowledge with beginners. I still have things I care deeply about that I can’t do much about, but it’s clear to me that developing myself has given me more chances to influence things I have a sense of justice about.

Something else that I realized after seeing this line was that in the past, I held resentment for those who were able to actually make change when they voiced their opinion. All types of figures build their success and trust through one main industry, but eventually use that influence to do something about other things. What I realized is, I hated it because I wanted to be able to do it, but couldn’t. Once that was clear, I slowly learned to redirect that energy from hatred to the drive to be able to do what I saw other people doing.

Ultimately, I wrote this post because there are definitely others out there who demonize being strong, whether that’s financially, physically, or mentally. Not long ago, I thought that way as well. I simply hope that by sharing my own story someone out there will challenge that belief and spend just a little more time developing themselves.