Hi Julie,

Wow, you've led quite an interesting life... :)

And I liked your story about being able to get anywhere if you carry a clipboard, a brief case and look straight ahead as if you know where you're going... I'm going to have to try that.... :)

Julie, I think often that you and I are really on a very similar wavelength...

When people tell me I CAN'T do something, I often look at it as a challenge too! I haven't used that line "Is that a dare?" yet, but heheh, it's a great idea... :) I'm going to have to try it... :)

I think you're right about having a few ready-to-tell success stories for when people say you "can't do" something or other...

My own personal one is actually do to do with physics. There's more to the story I mentioned before (though I've mentioned this briefly on the forum before)....

I actually flunked 3rd year physics the first time I did it. Then I did it again the next year, and did well enough to just get into honors (an optional 4th year undergraduate year here in Australia)....

Anyway, I worked REALLY hard during my honors year, and managed to get a scholarship to do a Ph.D. However, I wanted to do a THEORETICAL physics Ph.D., rather than an experimental physics one...

The head of the Physics Department asked to have a meeting with me. He sat me down, and told me frankly, "I don't think you can do a theoretical physics Ph.D." .... He was questioning my ability to do it....

Well, that just got me riled up! I went around to all my lecturers who were theoretical physicists, and asked them if they thought I had the ability to do a theoretical physics Ph.D. They all told me that yes, they thought I could do it....

Then I went back to the head of the Department. I told him what I had done, and what the responses of these theoretical physicists were.... That they ALL thought I could do it!

So he finally relented, and let me do a Ph.D. in theoretical physics.... (I needed to get his approval to do it....)

But that wasn't the end of it. I took his doubts as a challenge... I worked even harder....
Within the first year of my Ph.D., I had submitted my first physics article for publication.... This was quite fast, especially for someone doing a theoretical physics Ph.D. I felt I had something to prove, and I was driven to prove the head of the physics department wrong!

But it doesn't end there... I kept working hard throughout my Ph.D. I guess the final crowning achievement was that I got the Mollie Holman medal, like I mentioned earlier... for the BEST Ph.D. thesis in the Science Faculty....

Of course, the head of the Physics Department then congratulated me.... But as he was congratulating me, in the back of my mind were the thoughts, I STILL remember how you had no faith in my abilities.... But it seems you've changed your tune now!

I don't say this to boast, but to show how actually, the head of the physics department probably drove me to a great height of achievement, because I took his doubts about me as a challenge and a "dare"... :)

Julie... Somehow, I could see you doing something similar if you were in that kind of situation too.... :)

But I often use other people's success stories too.... Sometimes I remind people that Richard Branson never finished high school. I think of how Joe Sugarman had failure after failure after failure (as he mentions in his book "Success Forces"), before he started to have big successes.... I know a lot of people thought Anita Roddick didn't have a chance when she started The Body Shop... And on a similar note, everyone thought Debbi Fields would fail when she told them she was going to sell SOFT cookies in her Mrs Fields' Cookies store....

When you read these stories, you realize that it's not too wise to listen to what everyone else says... Be selective in who you listen to... :)

But it's GREAT to have a good circle of friends who are mutually supportive... I'm lucky that I have a circle of friends like that, which has increased to a good circle of online friends too since we started Sowpub... :) It truly is a type of "master mind"... :) Somehow, it becomes much easier to progress with your ideas when you have others who believe in your ideas along with you, and who are also traveling along the same kind of path....

Thanks Julie, I really enjoyed your entertaining stories... They always have wonderful positive vibes... :)

- Dien