My offseason training for Track was ridiculous, it took a lot of persistence. In order to get my winter miles in I was forced to run around the .25 mile driveway of my group home for up to twelve miles. I live in Montana so the winter is very cold and the road freezes with a thick layer of ice over the top of it. Running around this loop of hell has taught me a lot, not just in running but in life. There will always be things that you don't want to do, nobody wants to run outside in single-digit temperature but in order to achieve those elite goals, you gotta do those things others won't. What sets winners apart from losers is not the fact that they win, it is what they do to win. Motivation is different from discipline. To truly persevere through tough times you need discipline. I have learned to instill that in my life not just with sports but with academics and relationships. Persistence plays a key role in life. I know that if I do not pursue what I want in life it can leave me. Growing complacent and giving up leads to defeat, to continue to build upon what I have created I must not give up.

Self-care is an essential component in maintaining physical and mental health. For me, I find that my general demeanor and mood are heavily affected by my level of self-care. Taking care of is yourself isn't just physical it's mental too. Examples of things I do to take care of myself consist of basic hygiene, running/working out, playing and listening to music, not isolating, learning new things, and reading. Though these examples seem somewhat simple at first, together they play a very large role in my life. Maintaining my physical health has always been something that I have been concerned about. Things like basic hygiene and fitness have always come easy for me. Next year will be my first season as a collegiate runner and in order to perform well, I will need to be in top physical shape. Keeping up with my physical health coincides with keeping my mental health in good condition. I find that when I stop working out and taking care of myself, my sense of productivity and self-worth decreases. When my mental health is low I find that my athletic performance decreases drastically also. Taking care of my mental health is a lot harder for me. I get overwhelmed and stressed very easily. In order to maintain a healthy and balanced life, I find that I need to take time to care for myself. Being social and not isolating also help me get into a better place when I'm feeling down. Not internalizing things is key to keeping my mental health. When I internalize things I tend to get depressed and then apathetic which leads me to become very unproductive. Life is stressful and in order to live happily, we need to take proper care of ourselves.

My passion to work in the area of social work comes from my own personal experiences. Ever since the fifth grade I have been in counseling, more recently I am now currently going through recovery from addiction. I went down a very bad path during my sophomore year in high school, I ended up in an inpatient rehab and after that got sent to a residential treatment center where I currently reside. My life was in shambles, it was unmanageable. I had no will to even graduate high school or do anything with my life, I was lost. Over the past two years of being in treatment my life has completely changed. I am a new person and manageability has returned to my life. Over the past eight months I have accomplished great things, the most notable would be accepting a offer from the University of Montana Western to run Cross Country and Track for their team. Never would that have been a possibility or thought for me before coming to treatment. Without the social-workers helping me I would not be where I am today, treatment saved my life. I believe that the only way to properly give back to those who have helped me in my journey is to do the same for others in need. My experience will help me help others who are struggling. My ability to sympathize and empathize with the problems that they are going through will be a very valuable quality that I will be able to use. Addiction in it's nature stems from different problems. Personally, my addiction stemmed from; family issues, depression, anxiety, low self-worth and self-esteem. I started using to numb myself from my feelings until addiction became the biggest problem. Addiction cannot be cured but in order to start living a better life I had to start working on the roots of my addiction. I one hundred percent believe that addiction is a symptom of greater issues. Childhood trauma and addiction are heavily connected. A very large majority of kids that I have met in treatment have been through extreme childhood trauma, allot of them attribute their use to those traumas and trying to forget about them. One of the biggest problems is the fact that it is impossible to erase the past and forget about trauma, in order to live healthy trauma must be embraced. Just moving on is much harder said than done, with addiction on top of trauma it is very tough for individuals to move on. A new solution must be found since numbing yourself to death with an addiction never works in the long run and causes more problems. In order to break free of addiction one must work through the problems that it stemmed from and most of the time that takes allot of help from others.