Self-Assessment and Inspiration: Unveiling the Impact of Stephen Hawking’s Quote

Introduction

For my inspirational quote, I chose one said by a man who has inspired me ever since I first learned about him, and I still continue to be inspired by him to this day. The quote reads, “One, remember to look up at the stars and not down at your feet. Two, never give up work. Work gives you meaning and purpose, and life is empty without it. Three, if you are lucky enough to find love, remember it is there, and don’t throw it away.” This quote was said in an interview by Stephen Hawkings with Diane Sawyer in 2010 on ABC’s World News Tonight. This quote inspires both my heart and mind.

The Essence of Inspiration

Undeniably, this quote has many meanings for me and inspires me in multiple ways, all of which lead to me bettering myself and the life I am given. When I read the first part of this quote, it immediately touches a certain part of me, a part where my imagination is boundless and my creativity runs freely. I have always lived in another reality in my mind where anything is possible, and there are no limits to what could be done. When I was younger, this world was more like living up on candy planets and being an adventurous princess, but as I’ve grown older, it has become a world of goals I strive to achieve throughout my life. I often find myself wandering deep into this “world” I have created, and I just see everything as clear as can be, although the things I imagine seem nearly impossible. Yet, upon reading this quote, I feel as if they are only impossible because they have never been shown to be otherwise, and I continue to go deeper and deeper into this “world” and create theories and hypotheses about mysteries of the universe and soul.

Fueled by Purpose

Admittedly, for most people, my ideas may seem far-fetched without explaining the logic behind them, but the second part of this quote keeps me motivated to keep working towards proving or disproving my ideas, and if all else fails, I will at least have some interesting ideas for a book or two. With the motivation this quote gives me and my constant flow of concepts that I want to prove or disprove, I use my spare time to research certain aspects of my ideas and see if they really do logically line up to where they could be proven to be true one day. As I do this, I often find that they surprisingly do line up pretty well, which gives me even more motivation to continue with them and keep thinking beyond the box no matter how crazy the ideas may seem.

With this motivation, I have found myself accomplishing many goals, beginning with passing the SAT with 1100 at the age of fifteen and continuing to the present time where I am seventeen and dual enrolled in my second year of college with all my common core classes completed working towards my engineering degree. These accomplishments alone remind me to “never give up work” and to appreciate just how full my life has become just because I have worked hard for it. Finally, the last part of this quote comes into play with how lucky I am to be blessed with such love all around me. I know the quote is most likely referring to love for a significant other, but for me, it refers to any type of love because love is becoming harder and harder to find, and hate is just so easily spread even by family members, so if you have a loving family you are beyond lucky. With this being said, I feel extremely lucky to have the loving and caring support that I do from my family, and I will never doubt or forget that.

Self-Assessment and Human Behavior

Notably, there are two main ways that individuals act depending on their self-esteem. The first way is with self-assessment. With self-assessment, an individual usually has a higher self-esteem, which leads them to make decisions without fear of failure. This typically means that they don’t use self-protecting strategies and choose to do things that inform them the most rather than benefit them. The second way is self-enhancement. With self-enhancement, an individual lacks self-esteem, thus causing them to act more towards self-enhancing things such as taking a test that typically proves to be easier or less challenging rather than those who will take any test whether the results are positive or negative.

Individuals with low self-esteem do this to prevent lowering their self-esteem more by getting a low grade or coming across something discouraging. These strategies are known as self-protective strategies and are used consistently for self-enhancement rather than self-betterment. The article Self-enhancement, self-assessment, and self-evaluative task choice states,” Furthermore, in consistency with the self-assessment view, but not with the self-enhancement view, task preference was positively related to diagnosticity of failure: There was no tendency for subjects to avoid diagnostic information when it had negative implications for the self “(Strube et al.; L. A., 1985). In short, people use their self-esteem to make decisions in order to protect or increase their self-esteem in almost any situation.

Conclusion

Overall, this assignment was very good and positive for me because although I had inspiration from this quote before writing about it, I never fully realized how much inspiration I had pulled from it until I really thought about it. That alone made me realize how much there is in this world that people take for granted due to habituation. I also learned more about self-assessment and self-evaluation and how self-esteem comes into play with each of them in depth. These new findings have helped me understand myself and my relationships with others more, as well as the driving force for some of my past and present decisions.

References

1. A quote by Stephen Hawking. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/267117- one-remember-to-look-up-at-the-stars-and-not
2. Strube, M. J., & Roemmele, L. A. (1985). Self-enhancement, self-assessment, and self-evaluative task choice. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 49(4), 981–993. https://doi- org.db11.linccweb.org/10.1037/0022-3514.49.4.981