“Success just isn’t in your DNA.”
I’ll never forget the day she said those words to me.
I was in eleventh grade English class, and it was a Friday. I was eager for the bell to ring so I could get to baseball practice. We had a big game that night. As the bell tolled the teacher asked me to come to her office after class.
I knew this couldn’t be good.
I sat across from her as she handed me our most recent essay test with a big red letter that came much later in the alphabet than I had hoped. She told me not to be discouraged - that everyone has different skills and that this just wasn’t my “thing.”
“But even if you aren’t successful at writing,” she continued, “You can be successful at other things, like baseball. Didn’t you hit a home run last weekend?”
I knew she was trying to be helpful, but there was something about what she said that I didn’t like.
Her tone implied it had already been decided, not just that I wasn’t successful at writing but that I couldn’t be. And when I questioned her, she answered: “That kind of success just isn’t in your DNA, Darren.”
It’s true. My DNA certainly wasn’t extraordinary. My mother was absent, living a couple thousand miles away, working, I think, as a waitress and sometimes bartender. My dad was a college football coach with fewer nurturing instincts than a frat boy.
If you were to count up the “success strands” in my double helix, it wouldn’t add up to much, and my teacher had clearly done the math. But then again…
* Benjamin Franklin was the 15th of 17 children, had two years of schooling and was the son of a candle maker.
* Ralph Lauren was the son of a house painter.
* Steve Jobs was born to two college students who also gave him away to adoption.
* Sara Blakely, self-made (now) billionaire and founder of Spanx, had planned to be a lawyer until she failed the LSAT. Twice.
* Mark Cuban was born to an automobile upholsterer. He started as a bartender, then as a software sales person from which he was fired.
* Sean “P. Diddy, Puff Daddy” Combs lived in public housing in Harlem where his father was shot to death when he was two.
* Susie Orman’s dad was a chicken farmer, her mother was a secretary. Susie started as a waitress.
* Former General Colin Powell was born in Harlem to immigrant parents from Jamaica. He as a solid C student.
* Tony Hawk was so attention deficit, hyperactive that he was tested for psychological problems.
* Oprah Winfrey was born to a teenage mother in poverty-stricken rural Mississippi.
* Both my mentors - Jim Rohn and Paul J. Meyer - barely squeaked out of high school.
And the list goes on, and on, and on.
I wonder if any of their teachers ever sat them down and told them success just wasn’t in their DNA? Think how our world would be different if they had believed it, if they hadn’t gone on to create and live such extraordinary lives.
I wonder if anyone has ever said that to you?
I had a lot of time to think about what my teacher had said as I stood in the outfield that Friday night and somewhere during a home run lap, I vowed to prove her wrong.
Well I wonder if New York Times best-selling author and publisher and editor of SUCCESS magazine is enough… HA! Take that Mrs. So and So…. whom I’d love to rub your nose in it (just a little!) but I can’t remember your name - that is how much I have erased your commentary from my brain!
And really, it’s not all Mrs. So and So’s fault. During the 1920s America experienced a brief infatuation with eugenics and the idea that a man’s destiny and character were almost entirely determined by his DNA.
I know, ridiculous, right? But let’s remember during the same time they were performing lobotomies and shock therapy as regular practice for depression, and “coloreds” and women were not considered equal in the “All men are created equal” line of the Declaration of Independence.
Thankfully, ALL those crazy beliefs have been dispelled now. Including the one that your destiny and potential has anything to do with your DNA.
Here’s the deal. No matter what your DNA, or who calls you into their office and says what they say, YOU always get to decide. YOU are the creator of your destiny while you traverse this planet.
Success IS in your DNA.
And a final thank you to Mrs. So and So. Thank you for ticking me off, thus firing me up to prove you wrong. That was very helpful.
Article source: http://tiny.cc/SuccessDNA
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