Here are the stories, experiences, observations, expressions and comments of and about the people who became significantly successful but did fail in their initial efforts:
He is a great basketball player of all time.
Abraham Lincoln
As a young man, Abraham Lincoln went to war a captain and returned a private. Afterwards, he was a failure as a businessman. As a lawyer in Springfield, he was too impractical and temperamental to be a success. He turned to politics and was defeated in his first try for the legislature, again defeated in his first attempt to be nominated for congress, defeated in his application to be commissioner of the General Land Office, defeated in the senatorial election of 1854, defeated in his efforts for the vice-presidency in 1856, and defeated in the senatorial election of 1858. At about that time, he wrote in a letter to a friend, "I am now the most miserable man living. If what I feel were equally distributed to the whole human family, there would not be one cheerful face on the earth."
He had 12 major failures before he was elected the 16th President of the United States of America.
Albert Einstein
Albert Einstein did not speak until he was 4 years old and did not read until he was 7. His parents thought he was mentally retarded and one of his teachers described him as mentally slow, unsociable and adrift forever in foolish dreams. He was expelled from school and was refused admission to the Zurich Polytechnic School. He did eventually learn to speak and read. Even to do a little math.
He dropped out of school at age 15. In 1905, he published four research papers that outlined his theories on relativity, equivalence of mass and energy, Brownian motion and the photon theory of light. The theory of relativity was very controversial and although it was proven in 1919, the Nobel Prize committee did not mention it when bestowing the prize.He was awarded the 1921 Nobel Prize for Physics for his explanation of the photoelectric effect and for his services to Theoretical Physics.
Jack Canfield and Mark Victor Hansen
They are the co-authors of the world renowned Chicken Soup for the Soul book series.
They sold millions of copies.
They sold millions of copies.
However, New York’s 33 biggest publishing houses rejected them in the first month of their efforts to promote their book of stories. They were rejected by a total of 140 publishers. Their agent told them, “I can’t sell this book. I’m giving it back to you guys.” They finally found someone willing to take a risk on their project and their first books were published in June, 1993.
John Grisham
His first novel was rejected by sixteen agents and twelve publishing houses. He went on writing until he became best known as a novelist and author for his works of modern legal drama.
Ludwig van Beethoven
In his formative years, he was quite awkward on the violin. He was often so busy working on his own compositions that he neglected to practice. But his teachers felt he was hopeless at it and would never succeed with the violin or in composing. Beethoven went ahead with his efforts at music and composed some of the best symphonies of all time. He did five of them while he was completely deaf.
Michael Jordon
He is a great basketball player of all time.
He said, "Nearly 9000 times my throw have missed the basket, 300 times I have lost the match, 26 times when I could make winning score I have missed the throw and become cause of that my team have lost ! I failed again and again and yet I have raised up and that's why I am successful. "
Thomas Edison
Thomas Edison's teachers said he was "too stupid to learn anything." He was fired from his first two jobs for being "non-productive." As an inventor, Edison made 1,000 unsuccessful attempts at inventing the light bulb. When a reporter asked, "How did it feel to fail 1,000 times?" Edison replied, "I didn’t fail 1,000 times. The light bulb was an invention with 1,000 steps."
Vincent Van Gogh
During his lifetime, he could sell only one painting and this was to a friend and only for a very small amount of money. While Van Gogh was never a success during his life, he continued painting, sometimes starving to complete his over 800 known works. Today, his painting sell at exorbitant prices.
