010: Prove Them Wrong
I change the background on my phone often. I do this so it never looks too familiar. When it’s something different it makes me stop for a second and think if I really need to be picking up my phone. There are a bunch of different backgrounds I switch between - they are all those motivational style ones. You know the kind, with a picture of a mountain or the sky and some saying over top of them. There’s one I have that always jumps out to me, it says ‘Prove Them Wrong’. That’s a mentality I’ve always gravitated to, and a trope that often inspires me. If you’ve ever watched the movie Rudy and know that story, that’s the ‘Prove Them Wrong’ mentality I think of. Against all odds the underdog succeeded. But here’s the thing. I always had the wrong image of who ‘they’ were. The story goes that when the underdog succeeds in what everyone else thought was impossible - ‘they’ were proven wrong. Although that moment makes for great cinema, it is not the moment that matters. And those people aren’t the ones that matter. You need to trace the challenge back to the beginning. You need to prove them wrong before you even start.
Self-doubt can be our biggest challenge. We constantly question if we are on the right path, what others will think and how they will perceive what we are doing. What will the outcome be? This narrative we run in our head is just that, a narrative. It is not based in any way on our reality and what is actually happening. These voices are the ‘they’ we need to prove wrong. Sure, the outside critic might tell you why you can’t do something, or why you might fail - but that only matters if you internalize it and believe it yourself. And it’s only when we are already unsure about our direction that we actually listen to these critics, because they are reflecting what we’re already feeling. You need to address your own inner critic - listen to what it is saying and conquer those objections. Those who succeed do it despite the outside critics and because they don’t give in to their own self doubt.
Of course that is easier said than done. It’s also a topic onto itself. I’ve talked about this in previous editions, and if you’re interested go back and read this one or this one.
Anyways back to Rudy - he KNEW he was going to succeed from day one. And when you have that type of mindset and that type of core belief in your abilities, you will succeed no matter what. The critics don’t matter. It’s like they exist in some alternate reality. You have already determined your outcome, you know it to be true - and some outside voice is never going to change that.
