When 7-year-old Cameron Nielsen's mom, Tanya, was going through old papers from his backpack, she stumbled across a true gem.
Inside Cameron's school journal was a note he had written about himself.
"I love myself because I'm strong," the note read. "I love me. I'm on fire, man. It's awesome."
Cameron's dad, Tyson, said his wife immediately texted him a photo of it.
"We want to enable our kids to feel confident to go out and take on the hard things in the world, but it's hard to truly see if we're doing a good job at that," Nielsen told TODAY Parents. "So when she saw this unsolicited statement, she sent it right away. My first thought was, 'I am so proud of this kid and his fire, and I could use a little more of this power in my own life.'"
So he shared a photo of the note in a team meeting at work. It was such a hit that he asked Cameron for permission to share the photo on Reddit.
"He told me he was fine with it and the response was amazing," Nielsen recalled. "People were reaching out and asking for better pictures so they could print it out and put it on their walls or commenting that it was their new mantra."
Nielsen says when they asked their son why he wrote the note, the second-grader explained it was close to Valentine's Day and he was thinking about why he loved himself and his life.
"He said, 'I don't know, I just feel like I am strong and like I can do things that are scary or hard, and I really like that because it means that I end up doing some awesome stuff,'" said Nielsen.
The Utah family, who have two other sons ages 9 and 2 and a blog called Work Hard Be Kind, try to make sure their boys feel confident and believe in themselves.
"Cameron just doesn't talk about his feelings as easily as his older brother and he can be hard on himself occasionally because he seems to expect so much from himself," Nielsen explained. "That's part of what made this little discovery so meaningful."
What would Cameron tell others who feel sad or need a confidence boost?
"I would tell people that want to feel the same good way that it's OK if they feel like they are different or if have different likes or style than other people," Cameron told TODAY Parents. "I think they are automatically cool for having their own style of what they like and for who they are. They don't need to care what other people think, but if it helps them, they should know I think everyone's own style in life makes them awesome too."
