Your mates are getting A1… you’re still failing.”

“Your mates don’t have two heads o!”

“You’re not good enough.”

If you grew up in an African home (or any home that believes “tough love” builds character), these sentences are permanently tattooed on your soul.

They were repeated so often that you started believing them.

You started saying them to yourself in the mirror.

And the worst part? Many of us have sworn, “I’ll never say this to my own children”… only to hear those exact words fly out of our mouths the day our child brings home a bad result.

Those words are not motivation.

They are curses disguised as correction.

I know because I carried them for years.

I carried “You’ll never amount to anything.”

I carried “See your mate!”

I carried the heavy silence that followed every mistake silence that spoke louder than any shout.

Those words became my inner soundtrack:

Not smart enough.

Not bold enough.

Not enough.

Until one day I met a girl let’s call her Chioma.

Chioma was 19, painfully shy, barely spoke in groups.

When we started talking, tears rolled down her cheeks as she listed every label her family had given her:

“Slow.” “Dull.” “You’ll disgrace us.”

She believed she was broken.

I asked her one question that changed everything:

“What if every negative word spoken over you was a lie… and God has been speaking the truth the whole time?”

Then we did something simple but powerful.

Every day for 60 days, she replaced one old label with one new truth:

Old voice: “Your mates are better than you.” New voice: “I am fearfully and wonderfully made.” (Psalm 139:14)

Old voice: “You’re not good enough. New voice: “I am God’s masterpiece, created for good works.” (Ephesians 2:10)

Old voice: “You’ll never amount to anything.”

New voice: “The Lord has plans to prosper me and give me hope and a future.” (Jeremiah 29:11)

Within weeks, something shifted.

She started speaking up in class.

She made her first real friends.

She looked people in the eye and smiled a smile that said, “I know who I am now.”

Words are seeds.

The ones planted in childhood grow into forests forests of confidence or forests of fear.

So I made a decision:

I will not pass the curse to the next generation.

I am breaking the cycle starting with me.

Every morning I stand in front of the mirror and declare who God says I am.

Some days it feels silly.

Some days tears fall because the old voices still scream.

But I keep speaking until the new voice becomes louder.

And to you reading this right now yes, YOU:

You are not your worst grade.

You are not your parents’ disappointment.

You are not the mistake you made last year.

You are loved with an everlasting love.

You are chosen.

You are cherished.

You are a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a person God calls His own. (1 Peter 2:9)

Declare it.

Write it.

Say it out loud until you believe it.

Let’s raise a generation that speaks life starting with the way we speak to ourselves today.

Drop a ✨ if you’re breaking the cycle with me.

© Bagshaw Emmanuel