Don't Let the Haters Pull You Down: Stay Focused on Your Dream

Good morning, Believe Nation! Today's message is don't let the haters pull you down. Over to you, Drake.

I think every time I say I'm about to do something, people are waiting for me to fumble. That's probably one of the biggest motivations behind a lot of my raps is the amount of people that want me to fall or whatever. I think that that should be the motivation for most rappers, you know. The further you climb towards the top, the more hands you have on your pant leg dragging you to the bottom. They just start tugging at you, but, you know, I wear really strong pants.

Whenever you try doing something big in your life, you're gonna get the haters. You're gonna get the people who just hate on what you're doing, who point out all the reasons why it's not gonna work, and if you listen to them, then you're never gonna go out and accomplish your big goal. I haven't told this story in a while, so I think it's worth revisiting. I see entrepreneurs as gladiators. You wake up every day and you fight for your dream, right? You train, you work hard, you go into the arena, you fight, you fight for your dream, you fight for your family, you fight for your community, you fight for yourself, right? You're up every day working on your business, fighting, and you do it in a very public way because you have people who are watching, right? Your friends, your family, the community, they're watching you as you do this, and they're watching you make mistakes because at the beginning you're going to suck, you're going to make mistakes, you're going to fail, and they're watching you fall down. They're watching you make mistake over mistake over mistake, and it can be embarrassing. It can be hard to fail with people around you, but that's what the gladiator entrepreneur does every single day. You get back up and you go fight again. The haters, or the little man as I like to call it, they're the people who are too afraid to be the gladiator. He's the guy who's too afraid to step into the ring. He's the guy who's just standing up in his seats with his comfortable seats, laughing at you, joking at you, throwing popcorn at you, hurling insults at you, because he's too afraid to be an entrepreneur himself. He's too afraid to step into the ring himself. And maybe he tried once, right? Maybe he wasn't always a little man. Maybe he tried once and it didn't work out, and now he's convinced that it's never going to work out for him and that life sucks and that everything should suck, and he's just going to be a negative person. And it's not enough to live a mediocre life for him. He needs to pull everybody down with him too, right? He's got to bring you into his black hole of mediocrity because he wasn't able to be successful, therefore nobody else around him can be successful either. The other thing about the little man is that you're going to have holes in your plan, right? You have a big dream, you have a big plan, you want to accomplish something massive. You haven't figured it all out yet, right? Maybe you just came up with the idea last night and you go and tell somebody about it and they're going to say, "Oh, that's not going to work because of—" XYZ, right? Anybody who starts off with a sentence with, "Oh, that's not gonna work because," right? You need to eliminate from your life. That's the little man in action because of course there are holes in your plan. You don't have all the answers. You know where you want to go, but you don't quite know how you're gonna get there. Well, your real friends are gonna be people who understand those problems, see the holes, and try to help you solve them, whether it's just through emotional guidance and support or whether it's actually giving you practical hands-on strategies and suggestions on how to accomplish your dream. So stop listening to the little man. Stop paying attention to the haters. Because the bigger your project is, the more haters you're going to get. Stay on your course. Know that it's coming from a good place. And if you want to have a massive impact on the world, that's just part of the process, is dealing with and eliminating the little man haters from your life. Believe. So the question of the day today is, who is the biggest hater or little man in your life? Leave it in the comments below and I'm going to join the discussion. Thank you so much for watching. Have an amazing day. Continue to believe, and I'll see you again tomorrow morning for another shot of espresso.