Can you imagine being a ten-year-old and finding something that you love? Only to have people tell you that you are not good enough. You need to be careful. You are too weak. You are just a girl and you must learn how to take care of your family.

What would you do?

Imagine climbing a mountain and you are out of breath! The air seems to be like ice in your chest. You can focus on the pain or you can choose to stand up, take a deep breath and focus on the most amazing scenery. Pretty pictures that only an aerial view can give you.

In a time of depression with people just recovering from war, when people lived on rations and a family of 9 was under strain, finally Junko could look down and soar among the clouds. She could see no pain and suffering just nature at its most beautiful self.

Should she have chosen to focus on the pain, she may have missed this beauty. I often look at this and wonder if this is not what Junko Tabei felt when she went on her first class trip to Mount Nasu. She was excited and decided that she wanted to climb mountains. She did this at a time when women were supposed to stay at home and look after their families.

This was the beginning of many challenges and hardships that she faced. Mostly men climbed mountains and they did not want to climb with her. They laughed at her and made fun of her.

It was dangerous to climb mountains alone. She did not have fancy and modern equipment. She went to school and graduated. She formed a ladies climbing club. She wanted to climb Mount Everest and could not get sponsors. They made their own equipment, sewed their own sleeping bags eventually found a partial sponsor and they attempted the climb. When they were 6300 ft. high, they encountered an avalanche. Junko was unconscious for 6 minutes but she woke up and carried on. She scaled Mount Everest because she did not give up. She said: “The final ascent was a step-by-step struggle, but when I arrived I didn’t have an overwhelming sense of achievement. It was more like relief. I couldn’t believe the climb was finally over and I had to go down instead of up,” she recalled of scaling Everest, according to Japan Times. “The precious thing about that moment was, beyond being the first woman there, the summit of Everest was utterly beautiful, without a single manmade object in sight.”

What are your dreams?

What is stopping you from achieving it? You may not have to scale Mount Everest but everyone has their own mountain to climb? Are you going to give up, or are you going to step up, stand up and start preparing? The only person stopping you from achieving is you!

Sometimes the biggest dreams seem like the hardest to achieve. If we look at society today, we seem to be hampered by stereotypes, yet we have come so far. People always want to tell us what to do and how to do it. We have to do things in the way people want us to do things. But what if you came up with a different way.

What if you found a solution to a problem?

How would you do it. It is so easy to blame people. It is always someone else’s fault. What if it is actually us making excuses? There are always rules that need to be followed.

Right now our country is facing an epidemic. It is dangerous. The government makes rules for us to follow. Some people follow the rules and others break it. These rules are meant to protect us but people don’t want to listen. These rules are important for us to stay healthy.

When our parents tell us to do things that are good for us. It is important to follow those rules. They know best.

But what happens when boys tell us that they are better than girls, or people tell us that we are not good enough, that we are too fat, too ugly, too weak and too … whatever. These are things that we do not need to listen to. We cannot let other people define who we are.

Girls are smart and they can change the world. This is what happened when one tiny little Japanese lady decided that she would do what her family required but she would also follow her dreams. Her dream was to climb mountains. Her family was worried because they thought that she was too weak. She was supposed to learn how to be a good wife and mum, and she was, but she was also an adventurer. She did not give up. She pursued her dreams and she reached mountain peaks in 76 different countries.

She could have given up but she went on. She knew what was important to her and pursued her dreams.

What is your passion?

Your passion may change history. Are you going to discover?