Stupid People Are Your Biggest Threat to Being Successful.

Let’s just be frank about this whole idea of you being successful.

(And not just the type of success where you learn how to tie your shoes or pay your bills on time.)

Don’t get me wrong. Those are certainly great accomplishments along your quest for world domination.

But you probably want more for yourself.

You think of succcess as something entirely different.

Something much bigger and bolder.

Massive. Mind-blowing. Unforgettable.

That’s what we want for our brand of success.

The chips are down. The odds are cast against us. And yet we rise triumphant.

Like Henri Cochet.

Henri was a champion tennis player who dominated tennis in the 1920′s and 30′s.  But in the semi-finals of the 1927 Wimbleton he was being single-handedly dominated by the formidable Bill Tilden.

He was on the very brink of being eliminated from the tournament — having lost the first two sets.  And the elimination set seemed no different, he was quickly down 5-1 on points. A single point more for Bill and that was “Game. Set. Match”. Henri was done.

But then Henri put on one of the greatest comebacks in sports history. He didn’t give up that point. He went on to win that game, three more sets and the entire match. In fact, he won the entire tournament.

The newspapers reported that the crowd was so stunned that most of them didn’t even applaud. They sat in their seats hardly believing what they had witnessed.

A comeback like this hasn’t happened since.

That’s the type of success you want. Right?

Historic. Legendary. Unbelievable.

That’s what you want for yourself.

So it might be hard to believe that the biggest thing in your path to making that happen is “stupid people”.

Nothing will be more critical to your success than the art of navigating around the stupid people in your life.

They’re the people telling you that:

• “It’s time to get serious and stop messing around…”
• “Grow up.  You’re just a dreamer…”
• “That’ll never work.  Be reasonable…”

They may not even think of themselves as “stupid people”.

Sure – some of them are emotionally crippled, co-loser-dependent pond scum.  But a lot of them are the people closest to you right now.

They’re parents and coaches and teachers.

They’re people who don’t want you to get hurt.

So instead of telling you that “they’ll be there for you when you need them”, they just tell you to stop trying so damn hard.

And, shamefully, that makes them “stupid people.”

People who will rob you of massive, mind-blowingly legendary success.

They would have told Thomas Edison to stop working 18-hour days trying to find the perfect combination of materials to keep the light-bulb burning longer.

Heck, long before the 1,000 plus tries it took Edison to solve this problem, stupid people would have told him something logical like: “Look at what you’ve done.  It’s not working.  Maybe it’s time to get a real job”.

They would have done the same thing with Alexander Bell and his telephone, Felix Hoffman and his recipe for Aspirin, and Sir John Harrington and his invention of the flushing toilet.

Amazing things exist because passionate people make the choice to stop listening to the stupid people around them.

They know it’s going to be rough.

They know they’re going to get hurt.

But they don’t let misguided (but mostly well-meaning) people steal their dreams in place of comfort.

Like Henri Cochet in 1927 at Wimbleton, you might have lost a lot getting to where you are right now.

The only option then, is to start winning.

And to start right now.