When we want to help foster great self-confidence and believing in others, sometimes the best places to learn from are the TV shows and movies that we watch. My favorite character at the moment to learn those things from is Cruz Ramirez from the movie Cars 3.
“You’re a racer, Cruz Ramirez!” My daughter, Marvel, speaks excitedly to the yellow toy car hugged close to her chest, you can hear the pride in her voice. We’ve been watching Cars for the umpteenth time, all because Marvel said, “Pretty please?” to her daddy in her little sing-song voice.
Moments later she is shouting for joy as her favorite racer crosses the finish line, winning first place!
We try to keep the media that my daughter watches positive and fostering creativity, while also making sure it’s something we don’t mind watching ourselves since we normally end up watching it over and over. Thankfully, Cars 3 has become a family favorite and we love the role model that our daughter has found in Cruz Ramirez.
Watching the short “Lou” at the end of Cars 3
One of the first things that I love that my daughter learns from Cruz is her positivity that oozes with self-confidence. Cruz is first introduced as the best trainer in the world and you can tell why! She doesn’t let others give up when they’d rather give in. She helps her trainees overcome homesickness and nerves of having bugs hitting their windshield.
We can learn from Cruz by not letting others give in to those things keeping us from moving forward and in turn, this belief in others helps foster our own self-confidence by knowing that we can also not let our own insecurities keep us from moving forward.
Cruz Ramirez is also great at keeping others motivated. She doesn’t let lightning give up in his training. But she also helps him to remember that in order to succeed, you can’t skip steps.
And while Cruz is a great trainer and motivator, what we learn most from Cruz is that believing in others and in ourselves is more important.
Cruz always wanted to be a racer, but everyone told her she wasn’t so she believed it and became a trainer. It took Lightning losing to her all the time to realize that Cruz, himself, and everyone else was wrong the whole time, Cruz is a racer, not a trainer, just like my daughter tells her.
If we are constantly telling someone they can’t be something, they’re eventually going to believe that, but if we rally behind someone and believe in them, then they just might succeed!
I need to always remember to see the true potential in my daughter. I need to celebrate with her when she learns something new, I need to be there for her when she starts to doubt herself. While my daughter races through life, I will be her crew chief.
Our children and ourselves can learn a lot from fictional characters that we see on TV and the movies. It’s sometimes hard to learn how important self-confidence and believing in others can be, but I believe that a great character to learn those from is Cruz Ramirez, so we don’t mind watching Cars 3 a lot in our house, and I don’t think that you should mind either.
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