Be Inspired

Hey this post was inspired by something I saw on Adm3on’s blog and it got me researching and this is what I came up with.

Its about failure. I’m pretty sure that at one point or the other in our lives we must have experienced it and maybe felt shattered, shed a tear or two or just locked ourselves somewhere to avoid backlash and what have you.

But let’s say failure can be seen from two angles, its either your end point, or your starting point/stepping stone to bigger and better things.

I would like to deal with the latter angle and to do so I am going to bring up names of people that are HUGELY seen as successes in our world today but who at certain points in their lives were told they had failed and couldn’t amount to anything.

I hope someone out there gets this message and it does help.
Enjoy.
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1. Harrison Ford: Harrison ford is without doubt one of the most successful actors of this generation. He has been inducted into the hall of fame and has his name on the walk of fame too.

As of July 2008, the United States domestic box office grosses of Ford’s films total almost US$3.4 billion, with worldwide grosses surpassing $6 billion, making Ford the third highest grossing U.S. domestic box-office star.

But what people don’t know is that Ford was at the bottom of the hiring list early on in his career, having offended producer Jerry Tokovsky after he played a bellboy in the feature film, ‘Death heat on a merry-go round’. He was told by Tokovsky that when actor Tony Curtis delivered a bag of groceries in an earlier movie, he did it like a star and went on to become a big time actor. Ford felt his job was to act like a bellboy and if you saw a bellboy in the movie, his job was done. He told Tovosky that If you saw a ‘star’ in a grocery boy, then that actor had failed (I totally agree with him). He ended up being released and told he wouldn’t amount to much in Hollywood.

Well, star wars, Indiana Jones and a host of other big movies later, we see how that panned out. And to think that he was fired once because they said he couldn’t act and lacked ‘Star Quality’.

Lesson 1: Have self confidence and know your true worth.

2. Walt Disney: we all know who Walt Disney is right? He is the owner of The Walt Disney Company (formerly known as Walt Disney Productions). He has not one but TWO stars on the hollywood Walk of Fame. He has 59 academy award nominations and has won 22 of them. Both of these are records which frankly I don’t see anyone breaking anytime soon.
But before all this he took the idea of Disneyland to Paris and he was told to ‘Forget it’ because it will attract riff-raffs and it wasn’t what a High-class city like Paris needed. This was during the 80’s.
He fought on and after many more controversies, It finally opened in April 92 under the name EuroDisney Resort and was renamed Disneyland Paris in 94.

A second theme park, Walt Disney Studios Park, opened to the public 16 March 2002.

With 15,405,000 combined visitors to the resort’s Disneyland Park and Walt Disney Studios Park in the fiscal year of 2009, it is France’s and Europe’s most visited tourist site.

I have never been there before but if people that go there are called riff-raffs I think I will like to be called a riff-raff.

Lesson 2: Having a well thought out vision and plan for yourself means no matter obstacles and challenges that come your way, you will find it in you to overcome.

3. Albert Einstein: Even olodos, agberos, dropouts, unborn babies know this man or would hear his name at least once in their lives.

The theory of general relativity that he came up with is without doubt one of the greatest scientific equations and sparked a revolution in physics unlike any other thing ever seen. I can only smile as I write this because he made me like physics (yeah I had an A1 in waec; adjusts nerdy glasses).

He is rumoured to have been the individual who made use of his brain the most (somewhere around 10%), the average individual will use between 2 and 3%. *and you still don’t like him* He was/is/will always be a boss.

The one thing people don’t know is that he was earlier on in life asked to drop out because he failed many tests and had a slowed speech. Rumor has it that he failed them on purpose but we will never know.

Almost a century later, we keep talking about him, his life has been chronicled so many times and to date 2 movies about him have been made plus a broadway show. IN DEATH OO!

Lesson 3: Nothing in Life can ever replace hardwork and perseverance.

4. Thomas Edison: This Man is known as Mr. Inventions. Why I heard you ask? Okay I will list his major achievements and inventions for you to see; Photographs, telegraph and long lasting light-bulbs. For the late 19th century, these were huge inventions.

He had the first ever industrial research laboratory and he was backed by the government financially and expected to invent things on a regular basis.

Well, what many might not know is that he was told by his teacher that he was “addled” and asked to drop out of school. He also developed a hearing problem and found it hard to integrate among his peers. He ended up being home schooled by his mum and look how he turned out.

By the way he owns General Electric (GE) which still exists till today and is in the top 10 of the most profitable companies in the world.

Lesson 4: At times the opinions of the world shouldn’t matter because all they want is your downfall. Be your own best critic.
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I have a quite a lot more peoples experiences I would have liked to share but it will be too long.

Anyway failure is part and parcel of life. I saw this quote yesterday and it had me smiling; “trying is the first step towards failure; but failure is also a greater step towards success”.

Do you know anyone’s story that you’ll like to share with us too about how they overcame failure and being overlooked to make something out of themselves?

Do use the comment box and share with us.

Cheers.