Are You Merely A Product Of Your Environment? – Quote Of The Day

Restored from the Empower Network archive (2011–2017), lightly edited to meet our current advertising standards. Views are the original author’s.

Are You Merely A Product Of Your Environment? (Quote Of The Day)

Today’s quote of the day brings us to an important question. 

Are we all just merely products of our environment?

Today’s quote is from Mark Caine and it alleges that the first step to one’s success is to not fall captive to the environment one first finds themselves in.

Many are born into poverty or some other form of disadvantaged youth. 

Not everyone is born with a silver spoon in their mouth. 

I know I wasn’t.

I didn’t have it hard growing up by any means….(thanks to my wonderful mother and loving family who kept me protected from the potential pitfalls around me).

But that still doesn’t negate the dangers that existed in my hometown every day.

See, I’m from a small city called Gary, Indiana.

Gary gets a bad rap, maybe justifiably so in some regards, as being a bad place to grow up. 

I am living proof that there are great people who are raised in Gary.

But this doesn’t change the fact that a reputation like this was present about my city….

This is a newspaper clip from the Chicago Tribune in 1994 with news that my hometown had just earned the dubious distinction of being the murder capital of the United States.

I graduated from high school in 1995, so of course I was very well aware of the evils going at that time in my city. 

But although I lived in the “murder capital of the United States“, I never felt doomed. 

I always thought I would rise to greatness one way or the other.

I didn’t always know HOW I would rise to prominence, but something deep inside me always knew greatness was within me. 

I never dwelled on the poverty, crime and murder taking place around me. I was not insensitive to its presence but….

I refused to allow myself to think I would not succeed. 

We can’t always control our environments. 

But what we can control is our mindset. Our attitude.

Our commitment and belief that greatness will be attained regardless to what environment you are currently in or obstacles that you are currently facing.

With this unwavering commitment and belief…

Eventually the environment you are in will melt away and be replaced by the one of success you’d previously planted in your mind’s eye.

So, even if the odds are against you…

Even if you’re growing up in the ghetto….

Or in poverty-stricken neighborhoods in the midst of chaos…

You will rise above it.

Just paint the picture. Then go live it. 

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