Don't Tell Me I Can't!
Spite is the Best Motivation
I've been noticing a trend lately in the stories I have encountered the last few weeks. I don't know if this happens to you or not, but I tend to listen when there are repeated themes in a short span of time. It all started when I heard a famous story about Adam Sandler before he made it big. Apparently, while Sandler was in college studying to be an actor, a professor took him out for a beer and told him he'd never make it as an actor. He just didn't have what it took.
As history would have it, Adam Sandler explodes into the comedy icon that he is, and he's sitting with a bunch of famous comedians at a restaurant. He recognizes his teacher there and introduces him to all his friends as, "the only professor to ever buy me a beer." What that taught me is that spite is one of the best motivators for certain personalities. Tell them they can't, and they will show you they can indeed.
My wife and I have been married so long; we watch sports documentaries together for a good time. There's something about Liev Schrieber's voice narrating the history of baseball that just tickles my fancy. One of those documentaries we watched was Once Upon a Time in Queens, about the 1986 New York Mets. They were a ragtag bunch of misfits who loved baseball, but no one believed they would win the world series. Against all odds, they did it under the influence of cocaine, sex, and criminal records. Aside from squeaky-clean Gary Carter, God rest his soul, the rest of the team won the series sticking out their middle finger to all the nay-sayers.
While I haven't won a World Series and never will, I do know what it's like to be told I couldn't do things. Ironically, my mother would tell my older brothers they should be doctors or lawyers. Being the youngest, the standards dropped a little for me, so she'd tell me, "You should be a stand-up comedian." So, I went out and got a master's degree to become a literature professor. Spite got me here...or reverse psychology.
The last example that jumped out at me was another New York legend, Derek Jeter. Yup, you guessed it, another 30 for 30 on ESPN+. Surprisingly enough, his white mother and black father met in Germany, through the military, during the war in Vietnam. Their unity was a "screw you" to a racist society that would criticize them, so they engrained that into their son. Jeter always wanted to be a professional baseball player for the Yankees; but growing up in Kalamazoo, Michigan, made for a ton of unbelievers and discouragers. No one from Kalamazoo will ever make it to the MLB. Jeter was fueled by people's criticisms, and it propelled him to the very top.
All of this teaches me to turn other people's criticism and negative comments into fuel for spite. Rather than being discouraged by them, throw those words into the furnace of your bellow to ignite a passion for proving them all wrong. What do you want to be? What do you want to accomplish? I like this quote from G.K. Chesterton:
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