"The brick walls are there to stop the people who don't want it badly enough."

Shirt: J.Crew

Skirt: J.Crew via Ebay

Cardigan: Target via Ebay

Belt: from a dress

Boots: Steve Madden

Necklace: Forever 21

Bracelet: Primark (London)

Sometimes I'm really on top of my life and I get stuff done and I feel really awesome about it. Sometimes the best I can do is put one foot in front of the other and make a wish that everything will work out okay in the end. This is a wishing week. I have a memo due tomorrow, I ran out of eyeliner and haven't had time to buy anymore, my hair looks crazy, and somewhere between frantic memo-writing and even more frantic summer planning I still need to do my Civil Procedure reading. When I have weeks like this and I really would like to throw my hands up in despair and give up, I remind myself of this quote about overcoming obstacles:

"The brick walls are not there to keep us out. The brick walls are there to give us a chance to show how badly we want something. Because the brick walls are there to stop the people who don’t want it badly enough."

-Randy Pausch, Last Lecture: Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams

Randy Pausch was a professor at Carnegie Mellon who died of pancreatic cancer several years ago. Before he died, the university asked him to give a lecture as part of a series where professors were supposed to impart whatever wisdom they would want to impart if they knew this would be the last lecture they would ever give. Of course, in Randy Pausch's case it probably was one of the last lectures he ever gave, but even so he presented a really positive lecture about Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams and the quote above is from that lecture. 

There have been a lot of brick walls in my life and those brick walls have come in a variety of shapes and sizes.  The more brick walls I overcome the more I realize that fighting for what you want builds character and strength. You will never know what you are capable of until you go beyond the bounds of what you thought was possible. 

This week has been long, but I am not willing to let a brick wall stop me. The world is full of amazing opportunities and it seems silly to miss out because pursuing them is hard.

My Fashion Confession by Ashley is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.