Overcoming negative comments

The world we live in is one full of condemnation, trials and very little commendation or encouragement. If some people aren’t trying to bring you down one way or the other, there are others who will openly tell you that you can’t achieve anything in life. 

Getting over being told you cannot achieve anything in life can be very tasking. This week we are taking a look at what some people have been told they can never achieve and how they overcame such comments. This way, their story or experience can serve as guiding principles for some of us. 

Bimbo Daniel, 42, Accountant: “When I clocked 32 I was tormented with pieces of advice and calls to get married. I couldn’t freely drink water in my parents’ house without my mum going, “Go and get married, you are getting old and nobody will marry you again. Don’t you know that no man wants to marry any woman above 28?” Most times I cried myself to sleep because I felt like a prisoner in the one place I could call home. But as God will have it, today I am happily married with a child and one is on the way soon. I overcame it by telling myself that marriage isn’t everything and when the right time comes God will make my marriage possible and he did. I married a man that had never been married at 36.”

Maryanne Michael, 38, Lawyer: “My father had always disliked me and this was due to the fact that he had always hated my mother. I was with him even when my mother left and he transferred the hatred to me. I recall him telling me that I would amount to nothing good in life: that he was better childless than having me as a child. My step mum wasn’t left out as she too heaped her insults on me; calling me the bad luck of the family. I took solace in God and always believed in him to see me through. Today I am the bread winner for that same family. He has since apologised but I keep telling him it is God he needs to apologise to because he gave me the strength to live on. Forgiveness is easier said than done and it’s very difficult except by God’s grace. God proved himself and proved them wrong.” 

Rahmah Idris, 39: “ While in secondary school, the mother of my best friend told me I couldn’t be as good as her daughter and the daughter affirmed that I could never be as good as her in anything in life. From that day I resolved to be successful in anything I did. Today to the glory of God, I am better off in life than my friend and I even fend for her. Allah is always with the faithful irrespective of what anyone says or does. I resolved to make it, and indeed, I made it and am still making it.”

The bottom line is never to let our lives to be defined by others no matter what they say or believe about us. With God by our side and our faith in him, no one can dictate what happens to us now or in the future. We shouldn’t allow negative comments weigh us down in life.