Giving a deep sigh, he soliloquized.
“I will give it a try. I will!” He nodded to the neatly shaved beard, the light-skinned round man standing in front of his mirror.
“Man! You know you can’t be that disciplined with cash!”
He imagined how Tony’s thick voice would thunder when he breaks the news to him.
Bill took a few weeks of thinking, to conclude that it was high time he stopped taking monthly allowance from his Dad. He was 21 and was ready to start taking responsibility, especially his finances. Bill could spend till his wallet screams for a saviour.
Will he be able to cope with his recent decision?
Set to establish his Clothing brand, his older siblings and friends (Dan, Nick and Fred) discouraged him, plus emphasized his incompetence and lack of managerial skills. Yet, he was relentless in taking necessary actions to support his decision.
Six months later, Bill could boldly author a book on the journey thus far; as he had to make sacrifices and adopt discipline in spending. This marvelled everyone, plus his business flourished beyond everyone’s expectations.
Late icon and mentor, Myles Munroe said,
“Forsaking dreams because others belittle them or say we are crazy for trying them, wastes potential.”
There’s no doubt that when we set our minds to achieve significant feats often bigger than us, the opinions we get from people include a significant amount of “What? That’s too big for you to achieve.” Or “That’s almost impossible. Just back out.” A lot of “nays” having the potency to make us abandon such dreams often holler from the lips of those around us. We saw that, in the life of Bill. Almost everyone thought he let go of his decision because they felt he was incompetent enough. Their opinion was valid because Bill was extravagant with finances.
A thing you should learn from this is that people’s opinions of you about chasing your dream might be valid because of some habit you’ve been putting up, which contradicts the possibility of achieving such a dream. But, that doesn’t change your ability to change their narrative of you.
You read that after six months of Bill’s decision, his business flourished despite his extravagant spending nature. This shows that there were things Bill did to amount to his success. We can easily guess that Bill might have reached business consultants, been reading books on financial management or been connecting with business or financially disciplined-oriented individuals. The guesses can go on and on but one thing we are sure of is that he made an intentional decision with the right back up.
You can very well change people’s narrative about you even if all they can testify about you, is your inefficiencies, especially in reaching your goal. It’s okay to have almost all hands “thumbs down” at you when you have a vision, dream or goal. What’s not okay, is leaving it because you feel no one supports you. Let’s look at the causes and remedies of people’s negative opinions about you.
Causes And Remedies
1. Your Habit
People will label you inefficient because you often limit your potential by contradicting your ability to achieve greater feats with your habits/actions. This makes them define you based on what you’ve shown them you can, and cannot. They define you based on what you did and couldn’t do.
Remedy
The life of Bill in the above story made it clear that just because you were ineffective at some point, doesn’t mean you won’t be effective if you decide to be. People’s narrative of you can change when they start seeing “the new you.” You won’t have to try to make them believe in your potential, because the fruit will show off itself.
When next you conceive a dream, vision or goal, and you receive lots of nays from people because of your past habits, don’t get yourself all worried. Be like Bill; work on yourself behind the scenes and let your achieved goal, and realized dream tell them about the unlimited potential God has deposited in you. One thing you should have at heart is that people will always define you and limit your potential based on your past abilities.
2. People’s Perceptions
People often effortlessly throw “nays” at you because they feel you can’t achieve the mark you have set for yourself. This is not a result of your habits. It can be a result of your background, your environment, the resources you have at hand, and other limitations around you. This has often limited a lot of people’s potential. Hence, they abandon their visions and dreams not necessarily because of the limitations around them but because of the emphasis people put on those limitations through their opinion of one’s vision.
Remedy
What will you do if people discourage you and tell you how inefficient you are, to achieve the feat you are set to achieve? One thing I have often practised is getting God’s validation and trusting his cheers, first.
People can cheer you up today and discourage you tomorrow. We saw this in the life of Jesus in the scene of the triumphant entry, (see Mathew 2:1-11) and when he was brought before Pilate (see Luke 23:18-25). Hence, when people remind you of the walls of limitations that stand before you, disregard their opinion and trust in God’s opinion of your potential. God often uses different means to communicate with us, one of which is, he convinces us through our minds and when we commit ourselves to doing the needful, people’s narrative of us will change in due time.
Having known the above remedies, it’s also beneficial to commit to reminding oneself how people’s negative opinions about you are less than God’s and how you can disregard them through repeatedly affirming statements that transform your mind.
Below is a positive statement to help you disregard negative opinions that can degrade your potential.
