The Most Successful People Who Failed At First
The quote, “You’re only as good as your last success” should actually be rephrased to, “You’re only as bad as your last failure.” You can’t possibly be a failure every single time. You’ll find success if you work hard, plan well, and don’t give up—like the 10 most successful failures of all time.
10. Michael Jordan
Michael Jordan
failed getting into his varsity basketball team during sophomore year
because he was clumsy and was only 5 feet 11 inches tall. High school
and college sports performances are what NBA recruiters look into when
scouting for talent, but Jordan had failed right from the start. So he
locked himself up in his room to cry.
But
he tried out again the next year and got into the junior varsity team.
He practiced the game every day and grew taller by a few more inches
until he honed his skills to an unbelievable level. Years later, he
became the NBA’s most famous MVP and the greatest basketball player of
all time.
9. Lucille Ball
Lucille
was booted out of New York’s John Murray Anderson School for the
Dramatic Arts for being too scared to perform. After that, she kept
going back and forth New York as a fashion model and actress, getting
fired from at least two stage productions. She went to Hollywood, got a
contract with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, but her best efforts got her only in
B-movies.
Eventually
she found her way into radio then television, a new entertainment
medium back in the 1940s and 1950s. She and her husband Desi Arnaz
launched the “I Love Lucy” show on CBS, which went on to become one of
the longest-running TV shows in history, and making her a famous
comedienne.
8. Steven Spielberg
As a dyslexic young man, Spielberg’s
application to the University of Southern California’s School of
Theater, Film, and Television was rejected thrice. He went to California
State University in Long Beach instead, but ended up dropping out of it
anyway.
His
directorial debut was “Sugarland Express”—praised by critics, but a box
office failure. Nevertheless, Spielberg forged ahead and was given the
chance to film big-budgeted hits such as “Jaws,” “Close Encounters of
the Third Kind,” “ET,” “Raiders of the Lost Ark,” and “Jurassic Park.”
But the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences snubbed him for
years, and avoided giving him the Best Director award until 1993, when
he made “Schindler’s List.” From then on, he was recognized as an A-list
Hollywood director and a major artistic force in film history.
7. Walt Disney
Walt Disney was once a young artist whose editor fired him because he reportedly “lacked imagination” or “good ideas.” Disney
wanted to start a company creating animated short films. But his first
few tries failed; at one point he even lost some of his employees and
the rights to his own animated character (Oswald the Rabbit) to
Universal Pictures. But eventually, he built a gigantic entertainment
empire that churned out classic characters (Donald Duck and Mickey
Mouse) and ground-breaking animated films like “Snow White,” and
“Sleeping Beauty.”
6.Oprah Winfrey
TV’s
queen of talk grew up with poverty and child abuse. She tried her hand
at being a television reporter. But she was fired from her TV job
because she wasn’t considered fit for TV. Emotional problems stemming
from childhood had made her eat obsessively, creating her weight
problem. She also tried smoking crack cocaine, and had a number of
disastrous romantic relationships.
But
she reinvented herself as a talk show host, producing and starring in
her own “Oprah Winfrey Show.” She changed the way talk shows were
conducted by focusing on geopolitics, health, spirituality, and charity.
Her show went on to become the most viewed talk show on the planet,
turning Oprah into a billionaire.
5. Winston Churchill
Churchill
was a rebellious boy who never did well in school, even failing sixth
grade. He had a lisp and a stutter. He tried his hand at building a
military and political career, but he failed at nearly every election he
ran in. In later years, he was politically isolated from even the
British Conservative party he worked with, his political reputation so
in tatters that he exiled himself temporarily from Parliament and the
House of Commons.
But
Churchill was among the first to see the dangers of Nazi Germany, and
managed to become Britain’s Prime Minister at age 62 during World War
II. His steadfastness helped inspire British resistance against Hitler,
all the way to the defeat of the Nazis, securing him the title of
“Greatest Briton of All Time.”
4. Albert Einstein
People thought Einstein
was a “slow” young man. He hated the regimented ways of school. At the
age of 16, he failed the entrance exams at the Swiss Federal Polytechnic
in Zurich, and had to a smaller school instead. Though he managed to
get a teaching diploma from the Swiss Polytechnic later on, it took him
two long years to find any job at all. And when he did, it was for the
Swiss Patent Office as an assistant examiner for patents.
But
he tried writing his own scientific papers and thesis from 1901 to 1905
(including one on the theory of special relativity), which were so
groundbreaking that by 1909 he became recognized as a leading scientist
and one of the most brilliant minds in human history.
3. J. K. Rowling
At
one point, the famous author of the Harry Potter books was a broke,
unemployed, and depressed divorced mother feeding her children through
welfare. She was cradling a baby even as she wrote her manuscript for
“Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone” in a café, trying to write, eat,
and get her child to sleep. Her book proposal was rejected by no less
than twelve publishing houses. But
after the Bloomsbury publishing house agreed to publish the book, it
won so much acclaim and sold so many copies that Rowling could afford to
write the rest of the Harry Potter series—becoming even richer than
Britain’s Queen.
2. Steve Jobs
Jobs
redefined the way the world used personal computers, through the
company he founded, Apple, Inc. He created Mac computers and the GUI
(Graphical User Interface). But he rubbed a lot of people the wrong way
with his driven personality. By age of 30, the board of directors of the
very company he built “fired” him, leaving him humiliated and
depressed.
But
he started another company (NeXT Computer), which developed the
next-generation personal computer technology, and bought Lucasfilm’s
computer graphics division and renamed it Pixar. When a failing Apple,
Inc. asked Jobs to return to their helm, he again took over and
eventually made Apple, Inc. one of the most innovative and profitable
companies on the planet.
1. Abraham Lincoln
The 16th
President of the United States who was responsible for ending slavery
in his country was the self-educated son of a country frontier family.
He tried starting his own businesses and a political career, but because
of the lack of education, powerful connections, or money, he failed at
two businesses and in eight elections. When he got married to Mary Todd,
they had four sons, but three of them died early on from
illness—triggering clinical depression in Lincoln.
But
by 1860, Lincoln got nominated to be the Democratic candidate to the
presidency. He won the elections, and as President of the United States
oversaw the Civil War to its very end, with the emancipation of
African-American slaves.
