The amount of positive feedback we got from last Thursday’s email and on facebook the other day was truly heart-warming.
It really helped us put a little bit of criticism in place when compared to the mountain of great stories we’ve heard of how we’ve helped people transform their lives and bodies.
If you didn’t see the facebook thread in particularly, then you can check out what some of our lovely ninjas had to say here.
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It was interesting to hear from several of you in the emails, PMs and texts about the criticism you’ve faced too.
Many stories of people taking pot shots at those who are ‘doing something’ to make them feel better about their own lack of achievement.
Lots of you encountering hostility from friends and family when you start to put things in place to make the changes you want.
Although I say sometimes that I don’t really care what people who I don’t know think about us, I do if I’m being honest.
It’s human nature to want to be accepted.
To think that is someone is criticising us, it must be US that is doing something wrong.
The key, perhaps, is not to stop caring, but to find ways to put it in perspective.
I first came across the quote below about a year ago.
It’s one of a number of quotes / sayings / poems I have stored on my phone that I refer back to occasionally.
I’ve mentioned the poem ‘Invictus’ recently.
I really like ‘If’ by Rudyard Kipling too.
But the following is particularly apt to the point I’m making here.
It’s an excerpt from the speech ‘Citezenship In A Republic’.
Delivered by Theodore Roosevelt at the Sorbonne in Paris on the 23rd April 1910, it still rings true today over 100 years later.
I hope you enjoy it and it helps put any criticism you have received for good things you are doing into perspective (it obviously applies to ladies as well as the man it refers to):
It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better.
The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood
Who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming.
But who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause.
Who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly.
So that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.
If you’re being criticised for trying to do something good, I hope these words will help put it in context 🙂
Much love,
Jon ‘V For Victory’ Hall and Matt ‘W for Victory’ Nicholson
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