School was never really my cup of tea. I always struggled with the way we were taught, as well as the way some of my teachers viewed my potential. Comments like “Justin lacks potential”, or “Justin needs to blend in more” really didn’t assist either.
One teacher in particular seemed to really have it in for me all the time. He would make my life unbearable some days at school.
On my last day of school I remember him standing at the front gate of the school. He stopped me as I went passed and said the following words of encouragement. He said “Mr Herald, you will either end up dead or on the dole”. Wow, how uplifting!
On my way home those words went around and around in my head. To be honest I never allowed them to affect me in a negative way, but what I did do was use those words as fuel to prove him wrong in some way at some point in time. Now I didn’t dwell on it that much but I never forgot those negative words.

Skipping forward a few years at the height of my first business I was visiting a store in the area where I went to school. As I walked in I noticed that the shirts had sold quite well. I didn’t really notice the man standing in front of the store but as I walked past him he stopped me. It was the teacher who years earlier had given me his unwanted opinion. He stated that he was surprised to still see me alive, which was nice, and then proceeded to give me his opinion once again of what he thought of me all those years ago.
Now I just stood there and took it with a huge smile on my face. You see he was wearing my brand and he had no idea I owned that company.
You see my best outcome was to just prove him wrong by living a life full of results.
Now I didn’t concentrate on his words for all of those years that had past. In fact I just got on with getting on. But I have to say the amount of happiness that I felt that day was absolutely fantastic.

Your best way to put the people around who may have a negative opinion of you in their place is to live a life full of results. Sure, you can spend all of your time trying to prove people wrong, but the better way to go about things is to just get on with moving ahead with your life in all areas and let your results just speak for themselves.
I personally belive that a lot of people waste so much time and energy on trying to get some of the people around them to notice where they are in their lives. If we all just apply that same energy to completing what we desire, we end up living our dreams instead of talking about them all of the time.
That teacher of mine had his own opinion of me. Now I could have lived up to his expectations or I could have ignored them which is what I chose to do.
Now I didn’t know what I was going to achieve when I left school but what I did realise was that you never know how many apples are in a seed. By that I mean, my outcomes were up to me to create and not dictated by other people.
S if you have had people around you who have fed you a whole heap of negativity, just ignore it, start working towards proving yourself to yourself, and live the life that you deserve.

Author's Bio: 

At the age of 25 with only $50 to his name, Justin Herald set about changing the course of his life.

Justin created Attitude Inc, a clothing brand that became an international licensing success that turned over in excess of $20 million per year.

Justin’s success was so well noted that he was named the “INTERNATIONAL ENTREPRENEUR OF THE YEAR” for 2005.
He recently was also awarded the Future Leaders Award, which recognises him as being one of the 50 most influential leaders of the next generation in Australia.

In a few months he will launch “Intimidate Industries” which is a new Sunglass brand which already is a highly sort after brand before it even hits the stores, as well as owning numerous other highly successful businesses.

He has his own column in numerous magazines and in papers nationally in Australia. His articles have a weekly readership of over 5.5 Million people.

His website justinherald.com receives over 30,000 hits a day.

He also is the author of 7 international best selling books.

Justin is regarded as one of Australia’s most sought after speakers with engagements book all over the country and overseas speaking in front of 150,000 people each year.