Turning a negative to a positive; its one thing I’ve really learned over the last few years. Change in viewpoint does make us a lot stronger as individuals. This is much different than the direction that I have taken in the past. However, it is the combination of all our past experiences that makes us who we are today. There’s a few different aspects to what I am writing here, so there’s no huge push of motivation here, but rather I am going to give you some real talk based upon my own experience.
I found my love of fitness from wrestling, which is the reason I will still be going to watch Regionals this weekend. My love of wrestling was both good and bad, the fitness aspects were incredible, but the issues with making weight caused some poo nutritional choices. Let’s just say that I did not keep down most of the food I ate so that I could wrestle 140 senior year. Fitness in a way started for me as a quest to help those nutritional issues, and moved into a quest to create the perfect body. Those that criticized me had no idea what I was going through or where I had been, but I guess I made them uncomfortable somehow with my quest for success. I heard “Steroids” and whatever else you can imagine; people just do not understand hard work. Obviously I did not care and continued to march to the beat of a different drum, happily lugging along my cooler.
The criticism that we receive many times starts in our youth and oft-times continues, when no one quite remembers why it started. I went to a very small school and there were 12 kids in my eighth grade graduating class. When you go to a small school and don’t fit in, prepare for a lot of lunches on your own and real hell. I was always a very energetic, out side of the box thinker, which I had not really rediscovered in myself till recently. One day, in third grade, one of my class mates decided I was gay. First off, how does someone at that age even know what that is? Let me just say that I have nothing against anyone that is gay, but I just was not, just different from the norm. They needed something to classify me as. From third grade until eighth grade, I heard shouts of “fag”, “homo.” Where did it come from? I guess it made other people uncomfortable, and why I have no clue.
This caused me to close off when I got to high school and not until college did I find myself again. I still played, because I did not know what I really wanted to do. I got a degree in religion followed by a masters in history, but what do you really do with that? Be really smart? I followed things that interested me, but not to the point of being passionate about something. However, all the criticism was gone, and things weren’t exactly great, but I was comfortable. Graduation came, and I realized I was going to need a career. Apparently, there’s no one out there that pays you to be really smart.
I fell into teaching at a private school, and I was still safe. I started to get this feeling that I wanted something more. I had a ceiling, and though I admired teaching, I was miserable doing it. I met an awesome girl, that I am marrying later this year, and now, my comfortable was starting to get uncomfortable. I needed something, some way to create greatness. That’s when I was introduced to the product brokerage and internet marketing company, shop.com.
This really was something that kindled my passion, though it was difficult. The criticism came back, but I had some new knowledge: whenever you start to do something different than conventional, people criticize you because it makes them uncomfortable. I had never experienced a network marketing company before, and so, everyone that I knew though they needed to protect me. I heard a lot of things “You’re using people,” “Pyramid Scheme,” “I thought you were smarter than that,” and more more things were said to me. Even my closest group of friends left me, but they could not settle with me just not working with them, they saw it necessary to protect others from me and started calling everyone I know.
I look at myself a year and a half ago, and I have not quite reached my potential, but I am a different person. I am making money, I am helping others create income for their families, but more importantly I am enjoying myself. The Moral I have for you here it to find what your passionate about and go for it, and when others start to criticise you, then you know you are headed in the right direction. A lot of evil flies at those that strive to change to world, and mark you we will change the world. The best revenge you can have over evil is to be successful in whatever you do; flourish and prosper my friends!