Member-only story
Let Negative Words from Others Positively Shape Your Life
“You can’t.” — “Just watch me.”
In one of the social media groups I belong to, someone posted the following:
“Words have power. What is something someone has said to you that has changed your life?”
My response?
At a very young age, my mother said, “You can’t ___ (fill in the blank).” It really didn’t matter what she thought I couldn’t do; it was my response to that challenge that molded my life.
For years, as my mother told this story, she said I responded with,
It was the attitude that got me through the novel Oliver Twist for a 7th-grade book report when the teacher told me the book was too long. It was the attitude that found me passing geometry when the teacher told me I had to pass the final with at least a “B” (an impossibility in her mind) in order to pass for the semester. It was the attitude that secured me with role after role in college theatrical productions because, according to my mother, the theater majors were the only students to be cast.
