President Obama gets real with Humans of New York

President Obama opened up about the frustration and defeat he felt following his first, unsuccessful run for Congress in 1999 in a rare, personal interview with Humans of New York on Thursday.

“For me to run and lose that bad, I was thinking maybe this isn’t what I was cut out to do. I was 40 years old, and I’d invested a lot of time and effort into something that didn’t seem to be working,” the president told Brandon Stanton, the man behind HONY’s lens.

A photo posted by Humans of New York (@humansofny) on Feb 6, 2015 at 9:47am PST

“But the thing that got me through that moment,” he continued, “and any other time that I’ve felt stuck, is to remind myself that it’s about the work. Because if you’re worrying about yourself—if you’re thinking: ‘Am I succeeding? Am I in the right position? Am I being appreciated?’ — then you’re going to end up feeling frustrated and stuck. But if you can keep it about the work, you’ll always have a path. There’s always something to be done.”

Stanton scored an interview with the president when the White House heard about his successful campaign to help a Brooklyn middle school raise more than $1 million to send students on tours of Harvard University. Stanton, along with the student and principal of Mott Hall Bridges Academy who inspired the campaign, received an invite to meet Obama in the Oval Office.

Stanton is known for asking pointed, poignant questions that tend to reveal quite a bit about his subjects. 

“On January 19th, I met a young man on the street named Vidal, and I asked him to tell me about the person who had influenced him the most in his life. He told me about his principal, Ms. Lopez, and he explained how she had taught him that he mattered,” he wrote on the Humans of New York Facebook page about the pair who joined him in the West Wing.

Given the opportunity on Thursday, Stanton turned that same question right back around on the president:

“Who has influenced you the most in your life?” “My mother. She had me when she was 18 years old, and my father left when I was one year old, so I never really knew him. Like a lot of single moms, she had to struggle to work, and eventually she also struggled to go to school. And she’s really the person who instilled in me a sense of confidence and a sense that I could do anything. She eventually went on to get her PhD. It took her ten years, but she did it, and I watched her grind through it. And as I got older, like everyone else, I realized that my mother wasn’t all that different than me. She had her own doubts, and fears, and she wasn’t always sure of the right way of doing things. So to see her overcome tough times was very inspiring. Because that meant I could overcome tough times too.”

A photo posted by Humans of New York (@humansofny) on Feb 6, 2015 at 12:15pm PST

And Obama didn’t leave it at that — he dropped some encouraging knowledge on Vidal,”… you should never be too afraid or too shy to look for people who can encourage you or mentor you,” he said, “Never think that you know everything. And always be ready to listen.”

With a visit to Harvard in his future, a college scholarship fund in his name, and a few incredible mentors on his side, perhaps Vidal from Mott Hall Bridges Academy in Brooklyn will be back in the White House, for good, soon.

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