30/11/2025
I want to tell you something about the people in your life who bring you down. The people who make the comments that sit in your head, that make you feel your dreams are unrealistic or your attitude to attacking life and getting what you want from it is wrong. Those who might say you expect too much, aim too high, who make you feel like what you're creating isn't worth as much as you know it is.
You may feel that people like that don't see you. Don't see your worth, your quality, your trajectory. But that is not the case. Nobody feels the need to put someone else down if they already view themselves above them. The people saying those things see you perfectly clearly. They see the success coming your way, the path you're on and where it rises to. They see your power - a power they can't reach, either because they don't have what you have, or because they're too scared to do what you've done to achieve who you are - and that power makes them feel small. Their response to their own helplessness comes out as vitriol, a futile repositioning to imagine themselves above you, when in reality they've already placed themselves so far below that it hurts.
You can choose to be gracious to their pain, if you have space to, and if they're willing to learn. But you also don't have to. You owe nothing to anyone that's not cheering your progress on, even if your progress is sometimes the trigger for their pain. It's their life to be content with, just as yours is yours, whatever you want to achieve with it.
It's hard not to take on what people say, I know. But if you must internalise the put downs, then internalise their context too. "How well must I be doing for someone to want to take me down a peg that much?" "How much do I stand out for someone to tell me I have to fall in line?" "How powerful is the impact I'm making in the world that there are people taking time and energy out of their lives to respond to that power?"
They wouldn't be trying to convince you to lose if they weren't so terrified you could actually win.
Photo credit to the amazing
