Garret Gillespie

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“Kids will believe anything. And believing something is the first step toward achieving it.”

I was flying down to Arizona recently and between getting boarded and being able to fire up my laptop, I had a little time to kill. So I checked out the Spirit magazine stowed in the pouch in front of me. My mind was elsewhere and I wasn’t paying very close attention to what I was reading until I came to a column at the back titled, “Blessings Counted: Brad Paisley, The country star on luck, true gifts, and underage thinking.” I was struck by Brad’s description of his early performing experience.

“I grew up in a small town called Glen Dale, West Virginia. When I started playing guitar at age 12, the people there gave me more gigs than I could handle. They would constantly say, “Kid you’re great.” Looking back at those videotapes, I don’t think I was great. But if you tell a 12-year-old something enough, he’ll believe you. Kids will believe anything. And believing something is the first step toward achieving it.”

You know, he’s right. You give a kid enough encouragement while he’s a kid and there’ll be no stopping him when he’s an adult. So what kind of encouragement did I get as a kid? Did anyone tell me I was great? Yeah I can remember being told I was great. A lot of people told me I had a great voice. Like I said in The Interludes’ Coney Island Baby post, Kim and Michelle told me I had a good voice. Good enough that they didn’t give up until I joined choir. Then there was the day the football coach told me I had good size and should have played.

I continued to get a lot of encouragement from the people around me as I grew up. I was working as a janitor during a summer term attending college, and my supervisor told me I was too smart to work for someone else. In the Air Force, my CO, a full bird Colonel, told me I should be behind his desk, not him. That impressed me. Many people have told me I have a great voice for broadcasting.

Despite the encouragement of these and others, it’s taken me more than 40 years to finally start acting on their encouragement. If I agree with Brad—and I do—that a kid will believe anything, why has it taken me so long to believe them?

Maybe it has something to do with when I heard the messages. The earliest messages I remember are during and after high school. What about before high school? I don’t remember a lot of encouragement before then. I’m not saying there wasn’t any, but I either didn’t hear it or at some point I stopped believing it. Something had scared me. I was smart enough in grade school to be in the advanced classes, and I had some cool teachers, but the only memories that have stayed with me are of getting my tail chewed for not getting homework done or not writing very nicely. Left hander, what can I say?

What about at home? It’s been said that one of life’s injustices is that our self-esteem is pretty well established by the time we’re about 5 or 6 years old. Before we even have the chance to choose how we’d like to feel about ourselves, the choice is made for us. It’s rough, but it’s reality. So given the fact that I have a hard time digging up much in the way of encouraging messages I received up to the age of 12, I think I can deduce there either weren’t many or some other messages were louder.

So, if I didn’t get positive messages at home, can I give myself permission to bash my parents for not giving me the right encouragement when I was a kid? Can I try to make myself feel better by dragging the memories of my parents through the dirt? I can justify all of my failings by listing all the ways my Mom and Dad failed me and for a short time I’ll probably feel a little better, but in the long run it won’t do anything but sully my family name and make me feel like garbage. It’ll also waste a bunch of time I can instead be using to make real progress.

My Dad fought his demons to the best of his ability so I’d make it farther than he did, and in my opinion he did well. Though he fought a good fight during his lifetime, he couldn’t kill them all, so my dream is to finish the fight he started to help my children and grandchildren make it farther than me.

So now I’ve determined that eventually I did indeed get encouragement just as positive as Brad’s. Mine just came a little later in life. Does that make a difference? Absolutely. It makes a huge difference. By the time I started hearing encouraging words from influential people in my life, my negative perception of reality was so deep it would take 2 decades to dispel. And it’ll take a lifetime of vigilance to keep it away. A kid truly will believe anything and once that belief is planted, the adult that kid grows into is going to have a hard time believing anything else.

So, what are my options? I can accept the negative beliefs I adopted before I even knew what self-esteem was as unalterable fact? I can get angry and bitter and rail against the cosmos for my lot in life? I can suffer in silence and just live out my life avoiding the pain that change might bring about?

I don’t think so.

Sometimes I feel like a middle-aged failure, and I have to remind myself that I only become a failure when I give up. I haven’t given up and I won’t. Napoleon Hill found that nearly all of the successful individuals he interviewed in his research didn’t find their stride until they were in their 40s. I’m finding the same thing in my research. I’ve studied the lives of hundreds of people that battled far greater challenges than I, and their stories remind me it’s not too late to believe the encouragement I heard early in my life. The key is to have the heart of a child. I have to be open to change, and courageous enough to take the same risks I took as a kid. Back then I believed I could ride a bike without training wheels and through the scrapes and stitches I achieved it. Today I believe I can make a life using the talents I received so much encouragement for as a kid, and through the scrapes and stitches, I’m achieving it.

Like Abraham Lincoln, I experience loss and failure and learn from it. Like Joe Louis, I get up when I’m knocked down and find the courage to do what I love. Like Jim Morris and Vince Papale, I trust in my heart and never give up on my dreams. Like Walt Disney, I believe in my ideas and ignore the skeptics and naysayers. And like Tom Monaghan, I focus on what I have, not what I’ve lost.

I’ve been accused of being immature. That’s fine with me. If I’m still a kid, I can still believe in something. And, like Brad Paisley, I know that believing is indeed the first step toward achieving.

I’m glad there’s still some kid left in me, because I still need to believe.

And achieve.

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