Pay No Attention to Your Critics
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Written by Jimmie Burroughs 
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Critics said Tim Teabow wouldn’t get a D1 scholarship but he did anyway; they said he wouldn’t win the Heisman trophy but he did anyway; they said he wouldn’t be a first round pick but he was; they said he wouldn’t be a NFL QB but he is, and they said he wouldn’t be a winner, but they were all wrong.
Almost every day critics are criticizing Teabow, saying he isn’t that great of a football player. What are the facts? Just like one his predecessors, John Elway, Teabow took a deflated team and started winning games. Some say he is no comparison to Elway. Is that really true? How does Teabow’s first 8 games compare to Elway’s first 8 games? It’s not even close. Tebow tops Elway in every category including fourth quarter comebacks that Elway was best at…. Teabow’s critics need to think before they speak and check the facts. Check it for yourself.
If you listen to your critics, they will bury you alive. Our critics are often those closest to us who say we can’t do something or be something and should quit trying. A.P. Giannini is the lasting proof of not listening to critics; he is the real life “George Bailey”. He first founded the Bank of Italy near San Francisco; well, here’s the story:
A. P. Giannini was born in 1870, San Jose, CA and Died: 1949, San Mateo, CA. Giannini’s parents were Italian immigrants to the United States, originally from near Genoa, Liguria. They were poor and un-educated. Giannini started his business career by pushing a banana cart up and down the streets of San Francisco. One day he shared his dream to build a financial institution with his family; they laughed at him and told him to stick to what he knew, selling produce. Nevertheless nothing was about to deter him from his dream, not family or friends, critics, or anything else.
He attended Heald College, in San Francisco, California. After college his is first occupation was as a commission merchant and produce dealer for farms in the Santa Clara Valley. In that position he found established banks unwilling to take on his or the farmers business.
Determined to fill a need, Giannini opened the Bank of Italy in a former San Francisco saloon on October 17, 1904. Deposits on that first day totaled $8,780. An early difficulty to overcome was the San Francisco earthquake of 1906 when 80% of San Francisco was destroyed along with over 3,000 deaths, and from 200,000-300,000, of the city’s 410,000 population, were left homeless. However, the earthquake actually helped Giannini gain something of a loan monopoly.
Giannini bank building was destroyed by the quake, so after the earthquake he rummaged through the rubble and found more than a million dollars, which he moved to his home outside the fire zone in then-rural San Mateo; there he kept it hidden underneath garbage in a borrowed garbage cart. The raging fires severely heated the fire proof vaults of other big banks which had the money in them. Opening them immediately would ruin the money, so they had to be kept closed for weeks. Because of this, Giannini was one of the few who were able to provide loans at the time.
Giannini was forced to run his bank from a plank across two barrels in the street for a time. He made loans on a handshake (because most had lost all they had) to anyone who was interested in rebuilding. Years later, he would recount with pride that every single loan was repaid.
Through the years Giannini merged his bank with other small banks and finally in 1928 he merged with Los Angeles Bank of America. From there the bank expanded across America.
Today we see the fruit of this one man’s dream and his determination to reach it; it is called “Bank of America”, the largest financial institution in the world. A. P. Giannini’s motto was honesty, and that is what he built his reputation on; He believed in being fair and honest in dealing with people and thought it would bring him success, which it did both in the produce business and later his bank holdings.
Even though Giannini’s banks were worth millions, he never became a wealthy man because he refused to do so. He believed it would cause him to lose touch with the working class which was his objective to help. He gave large amounts of money away, and when he died in 1949, his assets were just over $500,000. The point of the story is, if he had listened to his critics, even his friends and family, he would never achieved much of anything.
Bishop Milton Wright sternly wrote around the turn of the 20th century, “Only angels are meant to fly, and not a man!”
Those words were considered to be the gospel to many in that day. But not so for a couple of young men in their thirties who were diligently building a flying machine on a sandy beach at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. These two brothers proved Bishop Wright to be wrong when their makeshift flying machine became airborne and flue for some 127 feet.
Who were these two young men? But of course it was Orville and Wilber Wright, those two famous brothers who just happened to be the sons of Bishop Milton Wright, who once sternly declared that it was impossible and could not be done.
13 year old Abbey Watson of Colorado, Holds eight different world weight lifting records as well as 23 U.S. and Colorado state records for her weight class — 105.75 pounds. Her coach says the one advantage she has over most other youth is that she has never been told her limitations. Isn’t it amazing what a person can do if they haven’t been consistently told by others that they can’t.This is an incredible example of how critics can actually limit a person’s performance.
If you have people who question your dreams and criticize your plans, relax because that is the common denominator for all who have great aspirations.
Conclusion:
Pay no attention to your critics; they will tell you that it is impossible to ever reach your dreams? That is what they told Tim Teabow, A. P. Giannini, the Wright brothers, Thomas Edison, Sam Walton and many, many others. Don’t pay any attention to them. Improve your skills, “If you want an average life, then just have average skills; if you want to have an exceptional life of freedom, you must develop exceptional skills.” Jonathon Budd. Dream your dreams, take action and succeed. Don’t forget what Jim Rohm said, “You attract success by the person you become.” Successful people as a rule are also great people.
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Jimmie Burroughs is the author of JimmieBurroughs.com ; get more tips on personal development: www.JimmieBurroughs.com
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