What We Can Learn from Famous "Failures"
When you think of Michael Jordan, Henry Ford, and Louisa May Alcott, think failure. They are among history's famous failures; however, they are also brilliant successes. There are so many famous "failures"--and the extent of their personal failures so vast-that one wonders how they succeeded at all.
Some say that famous people fail more often than "ordinary" people. A pretty interesting list--including some of the information here--comes from www.student.agendas.com.
Their stories are compelling, and we can learn a great deal from them. Consider Louisa May Alcott, author of Little Women. Alcott was "told by an editor that she'd never write anything that people would like." Actually, the American author had been tutored by Henry David Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson, and she emerged as a literary force in her own right. The Inheritance, Hospital Sketches, Little Men, and Jo's Boys are others among her successfully published works. Because they are still in print, it is safe to assume that she has indeed written something that people do like.
According to brainvisa.com, "People are often told that they are failures, many times before they reach their goals. It is through their grit, determination, and self-confidence that they prove others wrong." Also from brainvisa.com, here are some of the famous "failures" that did prove others wrong:
- Isaac Newton did poorly in grade school.
- Beethoven's music teacher once said of him "as a composer he is hopeless."
- When Thomas Edison was a boy his teacher told him he was too stupid to learn anything.
- F.W. Woolworth got a job in a dry good store when he was 21, but his employer would not let him wait on customers because he "didn't have enough sense."
- Michael Jordan was cut from his high school basketball team.
- A newspaper editor fired Walt Disney because he had no good ideas.
- Winston Churchill failed the 6th grade.
- Steven Spielberg dropped out of high school in his sophomore year. He was persuaded to come back and placed in a learning disabled class. He lasted a month and dropped out of school forever.
Einstein, too, had trouble with school. According to www.ucgstp.org, "Because he spoke haltingly for the first nine years of his life and would only answer after a prolonged period of reflection, Einstein's parents thought he was mentally retarded. His grades in school were so poor that a teacher asked him to quit, saying, 'Einstein, you will never amount to anything.'"
With school problems of his own, Pablo Picasso is also mentioned here. "Young Pablo's father pulled him out of school at age 10 because as a child, all he wanted to do was paint. He had enormous spatial intelligence, which was undetected by standard tests. Barely able to read or write, to enable him to enter high school, his father hired a tutor, but the instructor gave up since Picasso refused to learn math."
There are plenty of contemporary tales of failure-especially in the business world. The founders of companies such as Nike, McDonald's, and Sony failed again and again. Princeton University keeps a special list of its famous failures too.
So what do these "failures" have in common? They didn't give up, and they didn't let other people discourage them.
Other "failure" resources
http://www.trueyou.com/Beststep.cfm?bs=548
Here are some good tips for handling negative feedback.
http://www.bsu.edu/meec/pages/failure.htm
Take this failure quiz from Ball State University.
http://www.entrepreneurmag.com/Magazines/MA_SegArticle/0,1539,229896----2-,00.html
There are different degrees of failure to consider.