What to do with the energy you're spending on people who doubt you.

She's nice, but I don't think she has what it takes. That's what the regional manager said about me during my first store visit as a manager. Not to my face — to my boss, who told me later. I've heard versions of that sentence my whole career. A customer telling his daughter that college was the only way out of a job like mine. A guy at a conference who waved off an introduction with "yeah, we've already met" and turned back to the group. Someone who introduced themselves to a circle I was...