Peer pressure can influence a person to do something that is relatively harmless. In our younger days, many of us experienced pressure from peers. Reggie Selma looks back to his younger days where at a young age, he proved that he can already say NO even if it was hard for him to do so.

Saying "No" is Hard: Reggie Selma Makes Hard Decision Even With Peer PressureSaying "No" is Hard: Reggie Selma Makes Hard Decision Even With Peer Pressure

In today’s episode, we’re discussing hard choices. Perhaps making an easy one was the easy way out. But in your heart, you know, you should have gone a different route. Everyone wants to make that hard choice, the right choice in life, not the easy choice. My moment came when I was a kid growing up in Birmingham. They were building a new junior high school for us. Two blocks from my house, AG Gaston Junior High School. It’s in the summer. My brother Jeffrey, and about six or seven neighborhood kids, went to the construction site. It was only the foundation and a skeleton of what the school will look like. We’re moving cement bags around, pretending we’re rebuilding harmless stuff and it was fun.

That’s until one of the guys said, “Let’s go get on the bulldozer.” And then his brother said, “Why don’t you try to start it up”. That’s when I knew this was not going to end well. So I pretended that I heard my mother calling me. So I say, “Oh, that’s my mom. I’m going to have to go home now.” And then another kid said, “I didn’t hear your mom calling you. You got to stay with us. You can’t hear your mom from this far.” And then my brother Jeffrey said, “Oh, yes, we can.”
So we ran home and we got out of that situation knowing that it was something that we didn’t want to be a part of.

So we’re sitting on our back porch. About 30 minutes later, we see all of these boys, our friends, running from the wards that separated the school to our homes. As we found out later, the little experiment with the bulldozer didn’t go as expected. We could have been hurt or worse, and it hit a retaining wall. That retaining wall hit a batch of cement bags and they were covered completely from head to toe.

There was a full investigation. Police came to our home, and the police officer said, “Were you involved in this accident with the bulldozer?”

And I tell you, making the right decision never felt so good. I stuck my chest out. I walked past my dad, I looked up at this police officer. And I said, “No, sir. We were nowhere near that school, when that bulldozer hit that wall.” So of course, the other boys, they all confessed. And that summer, they all had to do community service.

Always make the right decision, the hard decision even in front of your peers, because it’s going to turn out to be the best thing you ever did. 

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