Michelle Obama Still Struggles With Self Doubt + Shares A Secret About People In Power

Michelle Obama

Michelle Obama Still Struggles With Self Doubt + Shares A Secret About People In Power

Michelle Obama is still on her Becoming book tour and in a conversation with author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie in London, she revealed that despite the success of her book, she still suffers from feelings of self-doubt that appear to “never go away.” She says,

It doesn’t go away, that feeling that you shouldn’t take me that seriously. What do I know? I share that with you because we all have doubts in our abilities, about our power and what that power is. If I’m giving people hope then that is a responsibility, so I have to make sure that I am accountable.

My advice to young women is that you have to start by getting those demons out of your head. The question I ask myself— ‘am I good enough?—that haunts us, because the messages that are sent from the time we are little is: Maybe you are not. Don’t reach too high. Don’t talk too loud.

Michelle Obama then shares a secret to the young women in the audience.

I have been at probably every powerful table that you can think of, I have worked at nonprofits, I have been at foundations, I have worked in corporations, served on corporate boards, I have been at G-summits, I have sat in at the U.N.: They are not that smart.

During the discussion, Michelle also touched on the progress her husband made while in office.

We mistakenly thought that Barack Obama was going to erase hundreds of years in history in eight years—that’s ridiculous to think that could happen. So, we’re putting down marbles and going backward doesn’t mean the progress wasn’t real.

 

Authored by: TJB Writer