I think that decreasing the amount of stress in one's life can help a lot with mental health. My mother was diagnosed with nourosarquoidosis. It is a very rare form of sarquoidosis that manifests itself more neurologically. She was told that it was mainly created due to stress. What they told her to do was to take walks, decrease the stressors in her life, pray, etc. As she did these things her mental health improved by leaps and bounds. As of last April, my mother's doctor said that she was one of the people that had recovered from neurosarquoidosis the quickest. I think that this shows that some of the biggest things can be solved by simple solutions. In my mother's case, it was simply a case of finding places where she found peace and creating a more even balance between what needed to be done, but caused stress; and what she should do for her own health and made her feel more peaceful and at ease. I think that there is a place for all of us where we find peace, for some it is reading, for others it is hiking, still others may find it in the thrill of adventure and excitement or of an adrenalin rush; but we all have a place that creates peace for us. We, however, need to find that place and then be aware of when we may need to take some time to create peace before being back out in the world.

In life, we tend to take the small things for granted and replace them with the once in a lifetime opportunities that are few and far between. I believe that living every day grateful for what we have and what we are able and allowed to do can make a difference in everything, but especially in the joy that we have. Many times in my life having simple gratitude for what I had made a difference in my perception of the circumstances that I was in. My junior year in high school, my mother was diagnosed with neurosarquoidosis. This is a very rare form of sarcquoidosis that affects the nervous system. It can create paralyzation on parts of the face as well ad swelling and other things. My mother had to be admitted into the hospital twice during the height of Covid because of this disease. My family could not visit her except through video calls...and that was only when she had enough energy to talk on the phone. When she came home, she was weak and exhausted. I ended up takin on a lot of the motherly responsibilities around the house. I homeschooled my 10 year old brother for the last three months of school while maintaining my own classes (some which were dual enrollment classes) and doing the cooking and cleaning for the family. Through it all though, the days where I woke up and was grateful for the flowers my brother would bring me or little things like that and appreciated what I had, those were the days that I was truly happy, despite the circumstances surrounding me!

I think that a lot of the basis of staying true to yourself is knowing what you stand for and how hard you are willing to fight to get what you want of what you value. There are a lot of things that people may think are true to them" but in reality they are more bark than bite. I had a recent circumstance where I had to stand up for myself and what I believed and stay true to myself, but standing up to an authority in my life. This person, a coach of mine, was not using their authority in the right way (not anything legally wrong) but as far as the encouragement that they gave. I approached this coach and told them that how they were talking to me was not a way that I responded to well. I am a person that needs to be encouraged more than told what I did wrong whereas my coach rarely encouraged and always pointed out the flaws in my work. After that conversation, my coach has gotten better about interacting me in a way that I can respond to well as a player under them. This also gave me a boost of confidence as I stood up for what I thought was right and stayed true to myself and the way that I thought instead of bending to the whims of what my coach thought was right. Being true to ones self is not easy at times and can also be very uncomfortable, but there is also a level of confidence and satisfaction that comes from knowing that you did what you knew was right even when everyone else may not have.

Confidence means, in it's most basic form, means the self assurance of self or others rising from one's own abilities and strengths. To succeed in life, an individual needs confidence. In my last year of schooling I was faced with the challenge of a person that took my confidence away from me. I was on the soccer team for my school. The coach was not the type to encourage or give confidence to people with a personality such as mine. I had to work long an hard to believe in myself and to prove myself to my coach and to the others on the team. Currently, I am working on doing things that build my confidence so that, in future years, when I come up against people like that, I will be able to stand my ground and not loose my confidence as easily as I did the last time. It is a constant battle to keep my mindset above the lies that are constantly being thrown at me and at all girls around the world, but the more we try to combat that and make ourselves more confident and capable and use that type of thing to sue our fire and motivation, the more confident we will become!