Become Great By Ignoring Your Negative Influences

By Author: Marc
Total Articles: 3
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We are always so quick to listen to the feedback and guidance of those around us, but why? Often people tell us that we are not capable of this or that for their own self-motivated reasons. One thing that I have learned in my years traveling around the country as a motivational college speaker is that people that are very successful tend to surround themselves with and listen to only positive influences. If you are looking to become successful in the future, the first thing you must do is get away from the negative influences in your life or, at least, stop listening to them.

I learned this lesson the hard way when I was thirteen years old

At thirteen, my dream in life was to become a successful entrepreneur, inventing a product that I was passionate about. At this same time, I was very into aggressive rollerblading—where you ride in half pipes, slide on rails and do flips. Every day after school, I would rollerblade on ramps with my friends and spend hours honing the perfect tricks. I loved it. But, while at school we obviously couldn't wear our rollerblades or do tricks and this bothered me. So I thought, ...
... what if I could still slide on rails with regular sneakers. This idea inspired me!

That entire weekend, I went into my father's work bench and began creating my prototype. I took an old pair of Reebok running sneakers, cut out the part of the sole that was under the arch of the foot and then attached a quarter tube of PVC piping underneath. The PVC piping served as the part of the shoe that would slide on the rails, however because the piping was small enough it wouldn't affect the shoe when walking in them.

That same day, I went out and tested the sneakers by trying to slide on a railing nearby my house. They worked perfectly! I was so excited that I went and showed my family. They thought it was great. My father suggested that maybe a shoe company would be interested in buying the design. I agreed and began a plan to market the shoe to manufacturers.

Then, the next day, I showed the shoe to one of my old friends, Jason. Jason was a nice guy but lacked any imagination and was a generally negative person. As soon as I showed him my masterpiece, he said, That's the dumbest thing I ever saw.

I was devastated. It took all the wind out of my sail and I immediately dropped the project.

Fast forward two years, I was in a rollerblade store and noticed a product called Soaps Shoes, which were exactly my design! And the guy in the store told me that they kept selling out of the product because they were so popular. Ultimately, Soaps went on to sell a lot of these shoes and more recently create the Heely Shoes that you see little kids with wheels under their heels scooting around on.

This was a painful but very valuable lesson in my mid-teens. Had I kept on with my project, I might have developed a very successful product. But I listened to someone that I should never have listened to.

Fortunately, by learning from that story, I was able to later ignore the negative people that told me I could never leave my boring job and become a motivational college speaker.

Next time you feel inspired to do or become something great, think twice about who you're telling or listening to. Be sure to only surround yourself with people that are supportive of not just you today, but also the you that you want to be in the future.