Every success story is accompanied by hardships and failures. No one born was great. Their diligence and faith made them what they are. They have faced many failures and obstacles before becoming the greats of today’s world. The road to success is challenging! Luck doesn’t favour everyone. One must get up and get going. It doesn’t matter when and where you start your journey. And where it takes you. What matters is that you never walk away from your destination. In this article we have discussed about the ordeal of 5 successful people who faced failures early in life, but didn’t stop trying. The stories of these people are so influential and powerful that they will inspire you to achieve your goals!
- Walt Disney
Walt Disney, the creator of Mickey Mouse, was dropped out of school at a young age in a failed attempt of joining the army. He was once fired from a newspaper editor because, “he lacked imagination and had no good ideas“. Not letting himself get bogged down by an early rejection, he went on to give the world characters like Donald Duck and Goofy.
He was turned down 302 times before he got financing for creating Disney World. Rest is the history!
From Snow White to Frozen, this legend and his Disney studios is responsible for magical and delighted childhood memories of generations and generations to come. Disney World is currently valued at $35 Billion dollars.
- Tom Cruise – Actor
Tom Cruise was born in poverty and had an abusive father. As a young child in a New York home, Cruise was intimidated and bullied constantly by his father. At 11 of his age, he started doing odd jobs like mowing lawns to support his family as his father left them.
Even in his school, the things were not easy going as he suffered from dyslexia, a reading disorder. His childhood was extremely lonely and kids made fun of him because he couldn’t read. Being heartbroken due to his conditions. He started exploring other careers in life.
So, he tried his best to become a priest, but couldn’t fit there too. Being good athletic, he considered pursuing a career in wrestling. But due to a knee injury he couldn’t even continue the only thing he was good at. But he didn’t give up. Then his teacher encouraged him to participate in acting. And he found himself surprisingly comfortable on stage. Cruise got his first big acting job at the age of 19. As he started to embrace his love of acting, Cruise realized that his inability to read would hold him back if he didn’t work hard at it.
Then he started focussing more on visual learning. He trained himself how to create mental images to comprehend what he reads. Today Tom Cruise is one of the highest paid celebrities in the world with net worth $470 Million.
- Amy Palmiero-Winters – Top Amateur Athlete
Palmiero-Winters is the top amateur athlete who was born in Meadville, Pennsylvania. She had competed in track and distance running from a young age. In 1994, Amy Palmiero met with an accident thrashed with a motorcycle. The motorcycle crushed her left foot and doctors said she would never walk and run again. Amy tried to save her leg for three years.
Ultimately, she faced 27 surgeries, and doctors were forced to amputate below the knee. It took her many years to learn how to run with a prosthetic leg. Today the 38-year-old mom of two kids is seeing her determination pay off. She sets six world records and five in ultramarathon events being an amputee woman.
When she’s not racking up miles on the road, Amy is the full-time director of sports for Team A Step Ahead in Hicksville, New York, a coaching and mentoring organization for adult and child amputee athletes. She is currently holding eleven records in various events and the ESPN ESPY Award as the top female athlete with a disability in the world.
- William Henry Gates (Bill Gates) – Technology Innovator
Born in 1955 in Seattle, Bill Gates is one of the most iconic and influential ‘technology innovator’. Unlike, many of the computer worlds other innovators, Gates was relatively privileged as a young child. Yet studying in private Lakeside schools Gates quickly grew passion about new computer systems.
And in 1970, at the age of 15, he began spending a great deal of time programming using basic language. Bill Gates went to a business along with his friend Paul Allen together they developed Traf-O-Data. A computer program that monitors traffic patterns in Seattle which worth $20000.
Gates and Allen were determined to start their own company. But Gates parents wanted him to finish school and go on to college, where they hooked to become a lawyer. Later he joined Harvard university and within a year, He dropped out without finishing his course. As he was more was more interested in pursuing his own coding.
And then he got the opportunity to form his own company. So, he founded Microsoft in 1976 with his friend Allen. Thus, Microsoft gained the dominant position among the software manufacturers through its programs like Microsoft Word and Excel, which become the industry standards.
With his mission and hard work, he took Microsoft to its next level after developing its first version of windows in 1990. This soon gained popularity with its new features year after year. Next version of windows was windows 95, then windows 2000, then to latest XP to Vista.
Today, Microsoft’s vision is “A computer on every desk and Microsoft software on every computer”. He isn’t greedy person and doesn’t believe in mere luck or god’s grace. Gates main areas of interest is into philanthropy which have been improving health. And helping to reduce diseases, like polio which affect young kids more.
- Mark Zuckerberg – Founder of Facebook
Mark Zuckerberg, born in 1984, was a dropout student from Harvard university, with a gift of computer programming. His coding experience began with Atari basic programming with the help of his father. Then his father hired a personal developer to train him, but did learnt so fast that he built a program called Zucknet, which can communicate with his father’s computer at home while his dental practices.
Mark developed many other programs to help college students. In his university he found a book called facebook that included students’ details. He found an idea out of it to build a website. In January 2004, Mark wrote an extensive code for building a site for face book. Less than a decade later he became the face of multi-millionaire company called ‘Facebook’. He connected 1 billion people around the world.
Currently is only 31, running his biggest social networking site with his five founders. Today, he is the youngest billionaire in this planet. By 2007 the site had over 100,000 businesses over listing their companies on facebook. By 2011 it became the largest digital photograph house of 350 million people accessing the website over mobile phones.
From year 2012 to 2015 he had big loses, many companies had loss of more than 50% of their shares. Nevertheless, Mark has remained true to his vision to create a website that entire world can use to communicate within each other easily.
He has turned on many opportunities to sell their products along with the security of end users. Today, Mark Zuckerberg is named among the 100 wealthiest and most influential people in the world. He is the 5th richest person in the world, having a total net worth of US $50 billion.
The inspiring stories of these people prove that nothing is impossible. If they could make it despite so many hurdles, so can you. No matter how many failures you face in life, the ability to get up again and finish the race is what makes you a winner.
