As I have been sharing more and more of my work I have, of course, encountered more critical comments than before. Thankfully, the majority of these have come from a genuine “trying to help” place and not just someone being nasty because they can. I have however, seen something that I’d never noticed before. Every so often I will get a nay-sayer who will argue against an idea or piece so vehemently that it becomes obvious that their issue actually has very little to do with the idea/piece, but is actually to do with something in them that was triggered by the idea/piece.
That’s when I realized that I’ve seen this reaction before, outside of comments about my writing. For example, I was in college when I declared to my father that I wanted to spend all of my savings to do a summer-at-sea where I would learn about different cultures and places and visit a laundry list of countries. He was not a fan of this plan. He was a nay-sayer and came up with all sorts of reasons why I shouldn’t do it – like turmoil in certain countries. I was so confused, because this sounded like a great idea to me and an amazing opportunity. It was only after much debate that the truth of the matter came out. It wasn’t really the program, or the different locales that he objected to. He was afraid of the consequences of me emptying out my savings to do the trip. Had I not kept arguing with him, I never would have figured that out.
I think the truth of that holds for other situations as well, and now whenever I have someone who vociferously opposes or doesn’t like something, I stand back and I ask myself: Why are they a nay-sayer? Is this truly a bad idea, or is their opposition coming from somewhere else? Does their opposition have my best interests at heart, or is it coming from a place of fear, or jealousy, or somewhere else? Think about it. I actually think that the reason that some parents or families are a person’s biggest nay-sayers is because there is such a fear of what will happen if the person doesn’t succeed. They care so much that they say no and they dissuade in an attempt to keep us safe. Which is kind of backwards if you ask me, but I’ve always believed that to get what you truly want, you have to be willing to take risks. Some people don’t think that way. So who are your nay-sayers, and why are they saying nay?
