J.K Rowling, the author of Harry Potter, spoke to the graduating class of Harvard in June 2008. She didn’t talk about success. She talked about failures. Her own in particular. I absolutely love her quote.
“You might never fail on the scale I did,” Rowling told that privileged audience. “But it is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all—in which case, you fail by default.
She should know. The author didn’t magically become richer than the Queen of England overnight. Penniless, recently divorced, and raising a child on her own, she wrote the first Harry Potter book on an old manual typewriter.
Twelve publishers rejected the manuscript! A year later she was given the green light by Barry Cunningham from Bloomsbury, who agreed to publish the book but insisted she get a day job cause there was no money in children’s books.
What if she stopped at the first rejection? The fifth? Or the tenth?
The measure of success can be shown by how many times someone keeps going despite hearing only no.
The following people are not the only ones who have succeeded despite failure and rejection.
I thought they would be the most interesting to you.
People who found success despite failures
Colonel Sanders : The founder of KFC. He started his dream at 65 years old! He got a social security check for only $105 and was mad. Instead of complaining he did something about it.
He thought restaurant owners would love his fried chicken recipe, use it, sales would increase, and he’d get a percentage of it. He drove around the country knocking on doors, sleeping in his car, wearing his white suit.
Do you know how many times people said no till he got one yes? 1009 times!
Walt Disney: The man who gave us Disney World and Mickey Mouse. His first animation company went banktrupt. He was fired by a news editor cause he lacked imagination. Legend has it he wasturned down 302 times before he got financing for creating Disney World.
Albert Eistein: He didn’t speak till he was four and didn’t read till seven. His parents and teachers thought he was mentally handicapped. He only turned out to win a Nobel prize and be the face of modern physics.
Richard Branson: He’s a billionaire mogul of Virgin but has had his share of failures. Remember Virgin Cola or Virgin credit cards? Probably not. He’s lost hundreds of millions of dollars but has not let failure stop him. When you’re rich like him you can rent his private island for $53,000 a night.
Mark Cuban: The billionaire owner of the NBA’s Dallas Mavericks got rich when he sold his company to Yahoo for $5.9 billion in stock. He admitted he was terrible at his early jobs. His parents wanted him to have a normal job. So he tried carpentry but hated it. He was a short order cook but a terrible one. He waited tables but couldn’t open a bottle of wine. He says of his failures,
“I’ve learned that it doesn’t matter how many times you failed,” Cuban says. “You only have to be right once. I tried to sell powdered milk. I was an idiot lots of times, and I learned from them all.”
Vincent Van Gogh: He only sold one painting in his lifetime! Just one to a friend. Despite that he kept painting and finished over 800 pieces. Now everyone wants to buy them and his most expensive painting is valued at $142.7 million.
Theodor Seuss Giesel: Dr. Seuss gave us Cat in the Hat and Green Eggs and Ham. Books every child reads. At first many didn’t think he would succeed. 27 different publishers rejected Dr. Seuss’s first book To Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street.
John Grisham: The American author first was a lawyer who loved to write. His first book A Time to Kill took three years to write. The book was rejected 28 times until he got one yes for a 5,000 copy print. He’s sold over 250 million total copies of his books.
Steven Spielberg: He applied and was denied two times to the prestigious University of Southern California film school. Instead he went to Cal State University in Long Beach.
He went on to direct some of the biggest movie blockbusters in history. Now he’s worth $2.7 billion and in 1994 got an honorary degree from the film school that rejected him twice.
Stephen King: His first book Carrie was rejected 30 times and he threw it in the trash. His wife retrieved it out of the trash and encouraged him to resubmit it. The rest is history. He has sold more than 350 million copies of his books. (He’s also made many adults fear clowns too.)
Stephenie Meyer: The author of the crazy Twilight series said the inspiration from the book came from a dream. She finished it in three months but never intended to publish it until a friend suggested she should.
She wrote 15 letters to literary agencies. Five didn’t reply. Nine rejected. One gave her a chance. Then eight publishers auctioned for the right to publish Twilight. She got a three book deal worth $750,000. In 2010, Forbes reported she earned $40 million.
Tim Ferris: The man behind the 4 Hour Workweek, who changed how many people view work and life, was rejected by 26 publishers before one gave him a chance. It’s been on the bestseller’s list for years, sold all over the world, and last year published The 4 Hour Body that went to #1 on the New York Times bestsellers list.
The Beatles: They were rejected by many record labels. In a famous rejection, the label said,“”guitar groups are on the way out” and “the Beatles have no future in show business”.
After that the Beatles signed with EMI, brought Beatlemania to the United States, and became the greatest band in history.
Michael Jordan: He’s famous for being cut from his high school basketball team. He turned out to be the greatest basketball player but never let failure deter him. I love this quote…
“I have missed more than 9,000 shots in my career. I have lost almost 300 games. On 26 occasions I have been entrusted to take the game winning shot, and I missed. I have failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.”
Thomas Edison: No list of success from failures would be complete without the man who gave us many inventions including the light bulb. He knew failure wouldn’t stop him.
There is no success without failure
Decide what is important to you and take huge steps everyday even though it doesn’t seem like it’s working. Success doesn’t happen without failures. It’s reality.
Deal with it.
How bad do you want to achieve your goal? It better be so bad that rejection won’t derail you.
How much do you believe in what you’re doing? Colonel Sanders did despite 1009 rejections!
“Fall down seven times, get up eight.” – Japanese proverb
Let these examples inspire you every day.
Inspiring stories of success
If you are serious about being successful in life then you can do nothing better than educating yourself about the inspirational stories of successful and famous people.
Many people who want to achieve success in life, career or business fail to do it because they don't know what it takes to be successful and how the road to success looks like. They just see the final result, which is the successful person, without having any idea about what this person went through.
By knowing the inspirational stories of successful people you will learn how the road to success looks like and your chance of succeeding in life will become much higher.
inspirational stories of successful and famous people
Below are short and quick inspirational stories of some of the most successful people that can help you know a lot about the approach required to reach success.
- Soichiro Honda Success story: Soichiro Honda is the founder of the company Honda which is one of the well known large automotive companies. Honda's story starts when he went for a job interview to work for the Toyota company. Honda was rejected and was told that he is not fit for the job!! The man didn't give up and decided to create a company that competes with Toyota and so honda was born!! If there is anything we can learn from this inspiring success story it would be to never give up.
- Stephen king's inspirational success story: Most people know Stephen king the famous writer but few know about his life story. Stephen's first novel was rejected almost everywhere it was submitted to the extent that he threw it in the garbage!! His wife got the story out of the garbage and insisted that he submits it again and in the end he became the Stephen king we know now!! There is a very important lesson you must come up with from this inspirational success story which is that rejections should make no sense at all if you believe in yourself
- Thomas Edison motivational success story: Thomas addition's success story is one of the stories that can motivate anyone after experiencing failure. Thomas failed about 999 times to invent the lamp before he succeed in doing it on the 1000th attempt. When people asked him how did you manage to keep going even though you were failing all the time he replied telling them, each time it didn't work i used to say i discovered a new way how to not invent the lamp. Thomas Edison success story should make you conclude that failure should never stop you even if it occurred more than once.
- Oprah Winfrey's success story: One of the inspirational stories that really motivated me the first time i read about it was the success story of Oprah. Oprah is one of the most popular TV icons nowadays and she is also one of the richest women on our planet but this is not how her story began. Do you know that Oprah was fired from her job and was told that she was not fit for TV earlier in her life?
- Bill gates success story: Bill gates the founder of Microsoft is one of the most inspirational business leaders living these days but do you know that his idea of creating a computer that has a graphical interface and a mouse was rejected when he first submitted it to another company? some people even say that the papers of the project were thrown in his face!! Now he became bill gates!!
- One day a partially deaf four year old kid came home with a note in his pocket from his teacher, "Your Tommy is too stupid to learn, get him out of the school." His mother read the note and answered, "My Tommy is not stupid to learn, I will teach him myself." And that Tommy grew up to be the great Thomas Edison. Thomas Edison had only three months of formal schooling and he was partially deaf.
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