As a teenager, Walt Disney was told by a newspaper editor that he wasn’t creative, that he didn’t have a good imagination. Lucille Ball was told that she didn’t have any acting skills, that she should try a different profession.
Winston Churchill was not thought of as a good student and twice failed the entrance examination into the royal Military College Sandhurst. The common denominator in the success of these people is that they chose to remove the negative labels. Because they thought better than the labels had read
It’s the same way today. People are constantly putting labels on us, telling us what we can and cannot become, what we do or don’t have. Many times, these labels are not in agreement with what God says about us; but if you don’t know any better, you will wear them like a truth.
The sad thing is that if we keep them on long enough, the will become so ingrained in our thinking we will become what people have said rather than what God has said. I read a story of a gentlemen who was told by his high school counselor that he was not that talented and he should focus on the lowest-skilled job he could find.
That counselor stuck a label on him- below average, barely getting by, not talented.” He wore that label year after year, thinking, I am not that smart. I just don’t have what it takes. After high school, he got a job at a local factory and stayed at the lowest level for years, just as he had been told.
One day the factory closed, so he went across town and applied at another factory. This company had a policy that every applicant had to take an IQ test. He took the test and his IQ score was assessed at the genius level. The owner called him in and said, “What are you doing applying for this position? You scored the highest of anyone in our company’s sixty- three year history.”
That day a stronghold was broken in this man mind. He removed a label that had held him back for seventeen years. He eventually started his own company and went on to invent several products that are now patented and in the market place.
As this man did if you are going rise to the next level, you have to remove any negative labels that are holding you back. To live better, you need to think better. Has someone convinced you that you have reached your limits and gone as far as you can go?
Or that you made too many mistakes? You are all washed up.” You will never accomplish your dreams.” You don’t have the resources.” Don’t go through life wearing any of those labels. People don’t determine our destiny; God does.
