Psychological Concepts it Is Difficult

Psychological Concepts

It is difficult to overcome the obstacles that society itself subjects its citizens to. This can be said about any individual growing up in a lower income community where it is expected for them to go toward their only options: gangs, violence, crime, and drugs. Despite my surroundings, I was able to overcome all this and end up stronger in the end. Growing up in an environment where school was not emphasized, made it difficult to stay on track, but definitely not impossible. I had an end goal in mind. I knew that the only way that I would ever be able to surpass all the odds stacked against me, and be able to leave the neighborhood before I fell victim to it, I needed to work hard in school. Unlike my friends who were already getting into trouble with crime, drugs, and skipping school, I stayed focus because I did not want to end up in a vicious cycle like many of them were going to end up in. It was this need to excel that allowed me to not be a victim of my environment. In a place where it was normal for all this to occur, I was able to escape all this without issues.

Resilience is the main psychological concept in my behavior. Despite the many opportunities that I had to choose the wrong path and to follow with what everyone else was doing, I decided that I needed to be better than that in order to be able to get ahead. I was resilient to things that may have caught my attention. Instead of viewing being part of a gang as some sense of security, I saw all the negative aspects that were associated with joining a gang, such as the unnecessary violence and the crime that many times went hand in hand with joining a gang. It offered security and protection, but I looked past that and saw that this was only a temporary thing; it would actually bring more harm than good. I was resilient in seeing everything around me as an obstacle, and instead chose to see it as a way of life that I did not want to continue to be a part of, and I knew that education was the only way out.

Another psychological concept is self-confidence. Had I been an individual with a lower self-esteem, I might have fallen victim to all the temptations surrounding me. I could have chosen the wrong, easier path, but I knew that I was better than that and that I deserved more than what was being immediately offered. I excelled in school and this in fact added on to my confidence level. I knew that the harder I worked, the more I would be rewarded. Instead of seeing myself as a victim to a life that I was brought into, I had enough confidence in myself to know that I could get myself out. And following the normal behavior of everyone around me was definitely not the way to leave my environment.

Allowing both resilience and self-confidence to guide me throughout my upbringing was only possible because of the positive outlook that I had about life. The psychological construct of positivity allowed me see the good side of everything instead of focusing just on the bad. The more material things I lacked, the more motivated that I was to look at things in a positive light in order to get through everything. This explained my behavior in things that would have brought any other person down. My friends fell victim to our environment, but my positive outlook on everything is what helped me get through everything that I got through.