Step up

_{Photo by Bruno Nascimento}

Sometime towards the end of last year, I was made the Chief Task force of my hostel, while my close friend was made the President. I honestly have no idea how the selection was made but I felt it had a lot to do with our body structure because my friend was bigger than I was and had a well built body, so everyone just automatically assumed he would be the best fit for that position.

Unfortunately, that wasn't the case.

You see, this friend of mine turned out to be one of those guys who couldn't speak in public, so whenever it was time to address everyone living in the hostel, he always avoided such responsibilities. So we went from having multiple meetings in a year to having none.

I never really said anything about it even though I always felt irritated by the fact that he couldn't speak to the occupants in the hostel all at once. Although I wasn't entirely silent about the whole thing, I just noticed that whenever I brought up the issue, we always ended up having some bad blood and I hated that, so I stopped talking.

But as time went on, things at the hostel started to get worse because no one was speaking up, and that was when I decided to step up. My job as the chief task force is to execute the instructions given by the president, but seeing how the president had decided to not give any instructions and watch the whole place turn to a mess, I decided to do his job and mine.

I went to him and told him of my intentions of calling for a meeting and also hosting it. He immediately gave the greenlight the moment I told him I would be the one doing all the talking and all he needed to do was stand there and look pretty. So when I got the greenlight to go ahead, I made some notes on things that needed to be addressed and also announced the meeting.

The day of the meeting arrived and everyone attended. This was also my first time hosting a meeting or speaking to that many people all at once but I've always been that guy who has vowed to deal with the spirit of shyness in my life and I did just that. I held that meeting like a boss and by the time I was done, some of the new occupant mistook me for the president.

Thankfully there have been some positive changes in the hostel and everyone is happy. None of that would had happened if I hadn't chosen to step up. And sometimes, that is all we need to do in order to see some changes in our lives, we need to step up.