By Adetayo Adetokun
If you knew someone who does even half of what you do,
You wouldn’t just admire them—you’d stand in awe of them.
You’d talk about their strength like it’s divine,
How they move through life with a quiet grace,
How they take every blow and still manage to rise.
You’d tell the world about their courage,
About how they face storms most would run from,
And you’d call them a hero,
A beacon of resilience,
Someone to look up to,
To celebrate.
But when it’s you,
You can’t see it.
You call your strength ordinary,
Your perseverance “just doing what I had to do.”
You carry the weight of a hundred worlds on your back
And still convince yourself it’s not enough.
If you saw someone juggling the battles you face every day—
The quiet struggles no one notices,
The heartbreaks you carry in silence,
The doubts you fight while keeping a brave face—
You’d marvel at their resilience.
You’d call them unstoppable.
You’d say, “How do they do it? How do they keep going?”
And yet, here you are, doing it every day,
And you don’t even give yourself credit for it.
If someone loved with even half the heart you have,
If they gave as much of themselves as you do,
If they showed up for others the way you always do—
Even when you’re tired, even when you’re hurting—
You’d call their love a miracle.
You’d say their kindness could heal the world.
But because it’s your love,
Your kindness, your sacrifice,
You tell yourself it’s just “what anyone would do.”
But they wouldn’t.
And they don’t.
You keep showing up.
You keep giving.
You keep fighting.
Even when no one notices.
Even when no one says thank you.
Even when the voice in your head tells you you’re failing.
But let me tell you something:
You are the person you’ve been waiting to admire.
The hero you look for in others lives within you.
You are the strength that people write about,
The resilience that others marvel at,
The hope that someone else clings to.
Think about it.
Think about the battles you’ve fought—the ones no one knows about.
The nights you stayed up worrying,
The days you pushed through exhaustion,
The moments when you felt like giving up
But chose to keep going anyway.
Those moments matter.
They are the proof of who you are:
Unstoppable. Brave. Extraordinary.
You don’t see it,
But you are the light in your own story.
You’re the one who refused to let the darkness win.
You’ve stitched yourself back together after being torn apart.
You’ve built a life from pieces that others would have abandoned.
You’ve done the impossible over and over again,
And still, you tell yourself it’s not enough.
Stop.
Stop diminishing yourself.
Stop waiting for someone else to tell you what you already know deep down.
Look at yourself.
Look at how far you’ve come.
Look at the mountains you’ve climbed,
The oceans you’ve crossed,
The fires you’ve walked through.
You are everything you admire in others.
And it’s time you started seeing it.
It’s time you started treating yourself
With the same love, the same kindness,
The same admiration you give to everyone else.
Because it’s you.
And the truth is,
You don’t rate yourself enough.
