Inspiration is an eleven letter word which may be a small word but have big meaning to many in this world. When you look up the definition on Google you get, “The process of being mentally stimulated to do or feel something especially to do something creative.” Whenever you ask someone “Who inspires you?”  You are usually told their parent or friend inspires them. For me, many people inspire me daily.

Whenever we get asked to write about this topic in the past, the first person who always came to mind was singer Demi Lovato.  She was my biggest inspiration for many reasons.  One being the way she spreads awareness for mental illness and overcame for her own illnesses. Since I always write about her, this time I chose to write about someone new. My English teachers from sophomore year, Mrs. Calabro and Mr. Zwirz. To some people they may just be teachers you see daily for the school year, but they taught me some of life’s biggest lessons. Sure, your parents teach you many life lessons. Like proper manners, proper hygiene, good morals, and values that help you grow as a person. But sometimes you also have people who come into your life and teach you lessons your parents couldn’t teach you.

Flashback to freshman year, the first year of high school. I was a very quiet student who didn’t say one word to anyone, not even at practice for cross country and track.  It was like I was a muted person who only talked when I was doing a workout on the track which I hated more than I hate math.  One of my teachers honestly thought there was something wrong with me because I wouldn’t say anything.  My teammates were even scared of me. I wouldn’t say I hated school. Maybe coming from the transition from middle school which was the worst years of my life, was the thing that got me down. Always hearing from people saying how high school doesn’t get better didn’t give me positive vibes either.

So now fast forward to sophomore year and to a far more positive year. English came which made me a pretty happy person considering it is my favorite subject, and this brings me to life lesson number one. This life lesson is called life is too short to be serious. On the first day of English class Mr. Z would always be making some type of joke with me.  Which to be pretty honest I am a very sensitive person so I was always getting offended because I didn’t think he was joking. Mrs. Calabro told me he’s not a serious person and likes to make jokes. As days went on in class, I finally got used to the joking. Before whenever someone would make a joke to me I always thought they were being rude to me, but now I realize that they were just joking. This taught me to not take people too seriously.

One of the next lessons I learned from Z was to make someone smile every day. For someone that wouldn’t know Z, he is the type of person who make sure he says hi to you in the hallway, bump your first, and even create some small talk. Sure these are small actions but they could easily make some day.  See we don’t know what problems people are facing or what they are going through. Any kind gesture could change their mood around. I know for sure these small actions change my mood and make me happy.  Every day always I got used to these actions and made me want to do the same for someone else. It’s like paying it forward to someone.  To my friends I make sure I say one nice thing to them in the morning, ask them how they are, and make them something. Those are just the few of many of nice things on my list. For teachers I see in the hallway I always make sure I say a quick “Hello, how are you?” and for the people I don’t know I do the small kind gestures like holding the door open for them or saying something nice to them about their outfit. Even if you don’t get the right reaction back from someone you should still be nice. You dont know what that person is feeling or what they are going through. Just gotta kill them with kindness.

Lastly the other life lesson I learned from this person was positivity is key. Some people may believe that being positive is easy but some other people may believe not. Like I mention before freshman year I was a very negative person. So trying to be positive was something I had to work for. Whenever I was having bad thoughts or just a bad day overall my first thought was to find Z or to blast music but unfortunately you can't do that in school. But there was one day that my mind mind was pretty much having the worst thoughts. It looks like I was at the right moment at the right time because Z was in the room. He saw that I was upset and said the words that helped me still to this day, "Every Time you are mad like this, you are alive. Everything going to be alright. You're undefeated Flied! Think positive." People may just think those are just words but to me they meant the word. After that my mind got set that positivity is key. Looking at life was better because negativity wasn't really happening anymore to me. When your mindset is focused on that good things will happen, you for surely don't have any focused on the negativity. You are always looking for the silver lining.

As mention before I wrote that I had two inspirations. Which when I think of this person my mind always seem to think about Mr. Anderson from Perks of Being a Wallflower. She goes by the name Mrs. Calabro, who was my English teacher and is my track coach. Years ago when I was younger I had no idea this person would make such a big impact on my life. As a teacher and coach she taught me many lessons. One of the lessons she taught me was having passion and dedication for something you do. It's pretty much crazy on how much time her day is consumed with school. When I had her as a teacher I thought she was so dedicated to being a teacher. She made so much time for her students, took a lot of time creating the lesson, staying after school till late, helping students on the weekend, and so on. Dont get me wrong I bet there are teachers out there that care about their students just as much as she does. I am just saying this stuff I learned from experience. There would be times I would stay after with teachers or ask them for help but they didn't seem highly interested in helping me or what I had to say. But for Calabro she is the type of person that puts people first. Her motivation to do all this work for us inspired me to like running and English even more. Not only in the classroom is she dedicated but also on the track. Now on the track that is a different story.At first I didnt like this sport because I realized I wasnt the best at it. But only if I tried a little bit harder and cared more for the sport which ended up happening. All the coaches seem so dedicated to their sport it made me want to try to be even better. So I grew passion for the sport. As the seasons went on through high school I liked the sport even more. Running is part of my life and something I have to do every single day.When you have passion and drive for something its more fun to do. Then rather doing something that you wouldn't enjoy.

Although I may be annoying to these two sometimes. It's nice to know I found someone that believes in me and what I do. Weather Z inspired me to be a better person or Calabro inspired me to be a better athlete they have both taught me meaningful lessons.