It is a fact that many people have allowed what other people say about them to define who they are.

But what they don’t know is that what is important is not what other people say about them but what they say about themselves.

So, instead of them concentrating their thoughts and energies on the potentials that God put in them at creation to develop and become successful, their minds would always be playing back all the negative words they have been hearing about themselves.

They would become so overwhelmed with the negative assessment of their lives by others to the extent that they would give up on themselves with the conclusion that after all the voice of men is the voice of God.

These negative assessments have destroyed their self-confidence and turned them to robots. They no longer have minds of their own because their self-esteem have been battered beyond repair like a small car going at 300kph and had a head-on collision with a trailer.

The reason for this is because what we see, hear and are constantly reminded of, becomes part of us and they affect our emotions and intellect. In a nutshell, what we see, hear and are constantly reminded of becomes us because it directs our thinking and controls our actions.

Nobody can easily separate himself from what he sees, hears and is constantly reminded of. That is the reason the people that surround us most of the time, the people we grow up with and the environment that we grew up in play a very prominent role in determining who or what we would finally become in life, unless we work hard to change it. But the fact is that, most times it is difficult without trained minds.

Our peers, what kind of home do they come from? Where they bred in homes where there is love and family members encouraged and supported one another to grow or in antagonistic homes where the Pull-Him-Down (PHD) syndrome is the order of the day?

The environment we grew up in, is it organised and supportive of the inhabitants, or is it riddled with Poverty, Hunger and Disease (PHD), an environment where everybody is at each other’s neck?

The people we grew up or associated with coupled with the kind of environment in which we grew up, to a very large extent inform our worldview and Africa being a third world continent with high level of illiteracy, superstitious beliefs and poverty, one does not need a soothsayer to know the kind of information and worldviews that would be dominating the air waves. In such an environment, crab, sheep and vulture cultures would naturally be predominant. This has therefore, made Nigeria, the most populous black nation in the world, the most gullible.

A nation that believes anything, that one is labeled insane for being critical or rational. A nation of bandwagon. A nation, where one is regarded as a rebel for trying to be different.

I am aware that some people must have said and might still saying a lot of funny things about you. I know that a lot of labels may have been slammed on you. But I want you to know that you are not who the labels say that you are. Forget the saying that the voice of men is the voice of God; it is only true if the people in question are Godly minded because the voice of evil men, even if they are in billions can never be the voice of God.

If you refuse to believe in the majority, if you refuse to be a bandwagon person, if you detach yourself from the trash talking community, you would certainly be happy.

I want you to know that if you want to achieve your purpose in life, if you want to fulfill your destiny in life, you need to have it engraved in your mind that you are not who other people say you are, rather you are who your mind says you are.

Take note: As long as you are not going for popularity contest, never waste your precious time seeking the approval of others or trying too hard to please others, so they would be saying good things about you.

Never waste your time trying to look good before everybody. Never waste your time trying to live up to other peoples’ expectations or standards. Never accept who other people say you are. Accept only who your mind says you are, provided that your mind has not been prejudiced by the negative labels that other people may have put on you.

Why I said this is because though I am a very strong advocate of the school of thought that one should always follow his mind because I believe that if you follow your mind you can never go wrong, but the truth is that this can only work when our minds have not been tainted by what other people have said or are saying about us.

Most times, when we listen to what we are not supposed to listen to and we have not developed our minds to dismiss those things, they go down to our subconscious minds to relax. Later, when we want to think or take decisions, those things we had earlier listened to but unknowingly digested would come up as if they were originally from within us. We would feel that we are thinking from the depth of our minds, while we don’t know that our seat of memory has been influenced, jaundiced and polluted, that we don’t even have the copyright of what is coming out of the pit of our minds.

If you want to achieve your full potential, if you want to get to the top of your world, you have to be mindful of what you listen to. It is not everybody that opens his mouth that you should put your ears to listen to.

Once you form a habit of listening to what every mouth that opens has to say and you don’t have trained mind to dismiss it, you would be influenced and distracted. So, you have to be choosy of what you listen to. But know it that you are not who other people say you are. Know it that you must not be who other people want you to be. Never allow other people to define who you are or who you should be.

Many people today have had their self-confidence completely wiped away because they listened to what other people said about them, but instead of dismissing it, they believed. Many people today don’t value themselves because other people have told them that they are worthless, and therefore, undesirable and they believed. Many people today have lost confidence in themselves to the extent they now wait for others to set standards for them. They are now like robots being controlled and manipulated by other people.

But come to think of it, these are the kind of people the egocentrics of this world need. They need people who would be submissive to their whims and caprices. They need people who don’t have minds of their own. They need people they would be setting standards for. They need people who would be more of robots than thinking beings. They mischievously refer to them as ‘loyalists’ or ‘good boys’ or ‘good gals’.

However, the bottom line is that you should never waste your precious time thinking about what other people are saying or thinking about you. You concern should be what you think about yourself. Again you should also know that people care more about what they would get from you than they care about you. So, let them say whatever they want to say or think whatever they want to think, while you do whatever, you want to do because it is your life and not theirs. At the end of the day, it is you that would give account for your life, not them.

ABOUT THE COLUMNIST

Peter Anosike is a well-known journalist and development economist.

His book, Dangote’s Ten Commandments on Money (Lessons on How to Make Money from One of the World’s Richest Men), was rated as one of the best development books in the world by Wall Street Journal and FORBES. The book has been adopted as a workbook for grooming entrepreneurs by the Small and Medium Enterprises Development Agency of Nigeria (SMEDAN). Anosike’s other of his books include, How To Be The Best You Can Be and Look Forward and Lean Less On Your Past – all trending in Smashwords along with Dangote’s Ten Commandment on Money and How To Be The Best You Can Be. You can follow him on Facebook and Linkedin.

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