Advancement of humanity is credited to people who warded off negativity

Serena Williams celebrates after beating Madison Keys during the Australian Open in Melbourne on January 29, 2015. PHOTO | PAUL CROCK |  AFP

In Summary

• The story goes that one day Ms Williams turned up for a match at Indian Wells, California, and all her enthusiasm was deflated the minute she walked onto the court because instead of being cheered she got booed and jeered at.
• The experience affected her so deeply that she avoided going back to the place... until this year.
• “I am at a point in my career where I have nothing to prove,” she explained her return to Indian Wells.

By WALE AKINYEMI
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In the February 16, 2015 edition of TIME magazine is a very intriguing story about tennis great Serena Williams.

The story goes that one day Ms Williams turned up for a match at Indian Wells, California, and all her enthusiasm was deflated the minute she walked onto the court because instead of being cheered she got booed and jeered at.

The experience affected her so deeply that she avoided going back to the place... until this year.

“I am at a point in my career where I have nothing to prove,” she explained her return to Indian Wells.

In a world where so many people live to prove a point to others, and where people spend money they don’t have to buy things they don’t need to impress people they don’t like, proving a point to yourself becomes a great attribute of truly great champions, who compete against their own records.

Never expect more from people than you demand of yourself

If no one is playing music for you to dance to, create it in your head and start dancing. Don’t make it about an audience. Make it about you!

In his epic 1976 book titled The Basic Laws of Human Stupidity, Carlo M Cipolla states that the first law of human stupidity is that “always and inevitably everyone underestimates the number of stupid individuals in circulation”.

Never expect more from people than you demand of yourself. Your expectation just might be directed towards a stupid person!

Stupidity is a lack of intelligence, understanding, reason, wit or sense. Note that very few people are all-round stupid; a person may lack intelligence in one area but have it in another.

If your expectations are based on the actions of someone who lacks the intelligence you need, you are in trouble. 

People whose success in life is based on external expectations controlled by others never do as well as those whose success is based on internal expectations. When your expectations are external they give you the safety net of having someone to blame, a fall back mechanism for when things don’t work.

If, however, your expectations are internal, then you will take the blame and find out what went wrong so that you can develop yourself and build capacity for where you are going.

Cipolla also states that a stupid person is one who causes losses to another person or to a group of persons while deriving no gain, and even possibly incurring losses.

He purports that a stupid person is worse than a bandit because the bandit profits from what he takes.

The stupid person may not have anything to gain from giving you a minus, like booing you or condemning something that her or she lacks the guts to embark on.

Why should you worry about the opinion of someone whose opinion has no bearing or effect on your life? This is the place that Serena Williams must have arrived at for her to decide to face those people again.

By booing and jeering her, they gained nothing. At the end of the game, she had made money while they had paid to watch her. Their booing did not affect her cheque.

Merchants of negativity thrive on the effect that their negativity has on people. If you refuse to be a depository for negativity, then these merchants will have to look elsewhere.

Each time you allow the stupidity of people get to you, you empower them. Everything that is a breakthrough today was once booed and considered impossible by so-called experts. The advancement of humanity has always been made possible by people who refused to allow negativity to get to them.

Let me end by quoting Cipolla’s fourth law, which states that non-stupid people always underestimate the damaging power of stupid individuals.

In particular, non-stupid people constantly forget that associating with stupid people always turns out to be a costly mistake.

The choice to be contained by merchants of negativity is entirely up to you. It’s time to revisit things you abandoned because of negativity. It’s time to go back to your own Indian Wells.

It’s time to make a difference. No matter how negative they come, remember that no one can make you feel inferior without your consent, and that success is the sweetest form of revenge.