All stories of success are also stories of great failures.
Let me share someone's life history with you.
This was a man who failed in business at the age of 21 ;was defeated in a legislative race at age 22;failed again in business at age 24;overcame the death of his sweetheart at age 26;had a nervous breakdown at age 27;lost a congressional race at age 34;lost a senatorial race at age 45;failed in an effort to become vice-president at age 47;lost a senatorial race at age 49;and was elected president of the United States at age 52.
This man was Abraham Lincoln.
The duck keeps paddling relentlessly underneath but appears smooth and calm on top.
Colonel Sanders, at age 65, with a beat-up car and a $100 check from Social Security,
realized he had to do something. He remembered his mother's recipe and went out
selling.How many doors did he have to knock on before he got his first order?It is estimated that he had knocked on more than a thousand doors before he got his first order.How many of us quit after three tries, ten tries, a hundred tries, and then we say we tried as hard as we could?
As a young cartoonist, Walt Disney faced many rejections from newspaper editors, who
said he had no talent. One day a minister at a church hired him to draw some cartoons.
Disney was working out of a small mouse infested shed near the church. After seeing a
small mouse, he was inspired. That was the start of Mickey Mouse.
Fear and doubt short-circuit the mind.
Successful people don't do great things, they only do small things in a great way.
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.
Henry Ford forgot to put the reverse gear in the first car he made.
In 1914, Thomas Edison, at age 67, lost his factory, which was worth a few million
dollars, to fire. It had very little insurance. No longer a young man, Edison watched his
lifetime effort go up in smoke and said, "There is great value in disaster. All our mistakes
are burnt up. Thank God we can start anew." In spite of disaster, three weeks later, he
invented the phonograph. What an attitude!
A New York Times editorial on December 10, 1903, questioned the wisdom of the Wright
Brothers who were trying to invent a machine, heavier than air, that would fly. One week
later, at Kitty Hawk, the Wright Brothers took their famous flight.
When things go wrong, as they sometimes will, we can react responsibly or resentfully.
Richard Blechnyden wanted to promote Indian tea at the St. Louis World fair in 1904. It
was very hot and no one wanted to sample his tea. Blechnyden saw that all the other
iced drinks were doing flourishing business. It dawned on him to make his tea into an
iced drink, mix in sugar and sell it. He did and people loved it. That was the introduction
of iced tea to the world.
Milton rose every morning at 4 a.m. to write Paradise Lost.
It took Noah Webster 36 years to compile Webster's Dictionary.
