One teacher who believed in you can outweigh years of people who didn’t. Carry that forward.

A single person taking you seriously can undo a lot of quiet dismissal. Belief works because it is specific: they saw an actual thing in you and named it, and that is harder to argue with than a general sense of being overlooked. You do not get to choose when that person shows up. You do get to decide whether you keep what they said.

Write down the exact sentence somebody once said about you that you still remember. Keep it somewhere you will see it on the flat days. Then hand the same thing forward, because being that person for someone younger costs about a minute.