I love this video from #Goalcast featuring Mr. Les Brown so I wanted to share it on he blog with my story along with it.
Much like Mr. Brown is saying in this video I tell my kids in my Urban Rangers inner-city class that I as a kid was labeled “dumb”, “wouldn’t amount to much”, “stupid”, and a whole other host of names and since people who I looked up to were calling that I believed it.
I then would tell them of how when I got into the Army that one of my mentors Staff Sergeant Crabtree asked me to do something and I basically like Mr. Brown here told him that I couldn’t because I was “dumb” and he told me to NEVER call myself that again.
Years later another Sergeant…Sergeant First Class Richard Wicker looked at me one day and said “why aren’t you taking college classes?”
I said “because I barely graduated high school and because only smart people go to college”.
Much like SSG Crabtree SFC Wicker wouldn’t allow me to quit and he pestered me until one day he said “if you take just one semester I will leave you alone but you are smarter than a lot of people who are going to college that you lead as an non-commissioned officer.”
So begrudgingly and full of fear I signed up and went to my first class and as I looked around the class I realized that men and women that I taught how to be good soldiers were also taking classes and I figured that I knew their work ethic which in many cases was not as good as mine so I figured that as long as I worked hard that maybe I could do this thing.
Point is that I didn’t believe in myself because people had spoken negative words over my life and if someone does that long enough the person that it’s being spoken to can and often will end up believing them like I did.
BUT…God can/will often bring along people that will speak positive things into your life as these two men (and others) did and IF you receive them you will begin to cancel out the negative that has been spoken over your life and begin to do positive things.
This video brought this back to memory so I felt like I had to share.
Be careful of what you say and how you say it to people and ensure that you never call someone “dumb” or “stupid”.
Resolve to speak positive words of affirmation to people and much like fertilizer when applied to a plant watch them grow!
Ron “Big Black” Garrett
#ronbigblackgarrett #keto4Jesus
Ron "Big Black" Garrett 