Beware the Saboteurs

I’ve come to the sad conclusion that there are a lot of people that will sabotage your attempts at success.

I think everything I’ve ever done, or attempted to do, there was a countless amount of “helpful” advice from people telling me it wasn’t going to work.

They will try to talk you out of it or tell you it can’t be done.

Why? Perhaps they want to validate their own failures by having you also fail (or just don’t try).

If I never tried, I’d have never achieved what I did. Was everything an automatic success? Hell no. Were there a lot of failures along the way? Hell yes. But I’d rather fall on my face having tried, than be some miserable person who never attempted anything.

I’m going to say right now if you find yourself surrounded by this type of advice, be wary of those influences. Sometimes this can be hard, this can be the people closest to you. Your family. But they are sabotaging you.

There is nothing crazier I could have told people than “I’m going to be a Happy Hardcore DJ”. Good Lord, can you imagine what I was told then?

Then of course I followed it with “I’m going to do stage hypnosis”. But at least by that point I had succeeded at being a Happy Hardcore DJ, so who’d going to tell me otherwise at that point? Well, a lot, actually.

Then there was “I’m going to create a tech business, with no training or education”.

I’m going to qualify this though with the fact I was living on my own, paying my own way. I lived or died by my decisions and actions. I went through real struggles at times. If I was living at home and holding onto some dream about being a DJ, well, yeah I can imagine that would be a hard sell. But I wasn’t at home. I was on my own. My life, my rules.

I will honor my kids’ dreams the same way. If they’re out there on their own, paying their own way, then I will respect their pursuit no matter how much I don’t get it.

I try to support people today with this mindset. If I live off of being told “it can’t be done”, then I’ll support you while you do it.

I was accountable only to myself, and made the decisions I did without letting anyone talk me out of it.

There is no success without failure(s), and the biggest successes only come from doing what no one else is doing. Don’t let anyone else tell you otherwise.