It’s unfortunate but when you launch a business, until the moment that your success is undeniable, the people around you are going to doubt you. Your family will say it’s safer to just get a 9 to 5 job. Your friends won’t buy your product or use your services. Your peers will give you a dozen reasons why it’s not going to work. 

        You just have to prove them wrong. External validation wasn’t going to get you across the finish line, that’s someplace you have to go on your own. Let people pat you on the back after you’re already successful and tell you they believed in you all along. You’ll know the truth. When you’re living a life they can only dream of, when you’ve accomplished what they thought you couldn’t, they’ll still find reasons to doubt. The good news is at that point it’ll be even easier to smile and let what they say wash over you harmlessly. 

        Have you ever piled too many pieces of wood onto a fire and accidentally smothered the flames you were trying to feed? That’s what you’re doing if you put too much stock into other people’s opinions of you. When you embark on your business journey you’ll already have self doubt; this is healthy, it shows you’re not out of touch with reality. But when you start to add others’ doubts onto the pile all you do is douse your own fire. And all those doubts people express stem from their own lack of belief in themselves: they can’t imagine doing what you’re setting out to do, so they can’t imagine you doing it either. It can come from a good place, they may mean well, they may want you to be safe and not set out onto a road to ruin. But being safe frequently also means staying small and confined to the boundaries other people have set for you. You can break free, you can do big things, and you can prove your doubters wrong. When you do, the feeling will be indescribable.