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Lead Stories: Wednesday, November 19, 2008

A Great Dad Believes You Can Do Anything

Posted June 18th, 2007 at 1:15 PM by Alexandra Haller

Section: Motivation

My Dad thought I could be the first person on Mars. He also believed I could be the first female president. He figured I was smart and talented; therefore, there was nothing of which I was not capable. Nothing. When I ran my first 5K and finished in about 33 minutes, he wondered aloud, as if were the most realistic thought in the world, why I wasn’t in the group of runners finishing sooner. Did that bother me? No. This is how my dad has always been, pushing me (and my siblings) because he thinks it’s the most natural fact that I would succeed.

The thing is that I’m never the one at the front of the finish line. When I was in eighth grade, I was forced to sign up for a field day event. I was painfully skinny, comically uncoordinated and god-awful scared of anything slightly athletic. Whatever event I was assigned to, I had made up my mind that I’d likely lose. The only available slot for the races was on the end of a 4-person relay and I was quite certain I’d let the other three down. Was my Dad going to let that attitude persist? No way.
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