What’s Your Motivation When the Odds Are Stacked Against You?

I read a blog post the other day that asked the question ‘Is having something to prove a good enough reason to do something?’  When I read the post the blogger discussed how perhaps we should not use someone telling us that we can’t achieve something or someone’s negativity altogether to influence or motivate whether or not we in fact decide to go after what it is that we want.  She stated that people pleasing was something not to get caught up in.  Initially I felt that she might have a point to that statement and that people’s sheer passion for doing something should be enough to ‘just do it’ and that it shouldn’t take someone else telling us no or rejecting our passion for us to go at it full force.  

But then I realized something.  Isn’t that the nature of how dreams are realized, and how businesses are built, and how people are made to be successful?  I mean of course you dream something and naturally you want to achieve that dream no matter what and when you start a business you hopefully are starting that business because it is something that you’ve always wanted to do.  But if you listen to a lot of successful people talk about how they got there and how they accomplished their dreams and started their businesses, a lot of it had something to do with what someone told them they would never be able to do.  

Think of how many singers and film stars were told no, and how many times they were told no, and how many people even told them that they were crazy to think they would ever really make it.  Now think about how that just fired them up to going after that dream with even more force and more drive.  Think about Tyler Perry and Oprah Winfrey and Steve Jobs, and Bill Gates and how many people told them they would never make it and that they would never see their dreams become a reality and how those words must have fueled the fire that was already lit underneath them.  

I remember hearing an interview once about an entrepreneur going after their dream and starting their own company (can’t quite remember who at this exact moment) and when they were asked what made them go after their goal when all of the odds were stacked against them, their response was simply ‘someone told me I couldn’t have it’.  It’s amazing what someone telling you NO will do for your drive and ambition to prove them wrong and get what you want in spite of all the odds stacked against you.  I hate to be told NO but if I really think about it, when I do get to where I want to be in life, those No’s will be what made me so fiercely determined to prove everyone who said I couldn’t do it wrong.  

Jimmetta Carpenter

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