10 Michelle Obama Quotes That Will Have You Ready to Take on the Day

Job titles shouldn’t matter. “What I learned was none of that has to do necessarily with who I am,” Obama said in a 2018 panel with Penguins Books U.K., “not what I want to be.”

Instead, Obama encourages you to think big: What do you care about, how do you want to invest your time, what brings your joy and what makes your sad?

“We don’t teach that in school,” she continued, “but I learned to try and find that for me and turn that passion into my career.” 

Once she did that, her life changed for the best. Why? “Because I started asking myself that one simple question: Not what did I want to be, but who did I want to be?” she said, later adding,”If you’re starting to think, what kind of work will bring you joy? Because if you find that, you’re going to do well at it and everything else will fall into place. And it did for me.”