14 GOOD REASONS TO NEVER GIVE UP

Recently a good friend was telling me about his frustrations with his young son who tends to give up if he can’t do something straight away.

‘I think it’s our fault,’ he said. ‘We always told him he was special, and he grew up thinking that he could do anything without too much effort.

Now, if something gets hard, he just gives up and does something else.’

As Malcolm Gladwell pointed out in Outliers, talent can be over rated.

Sometimes what we call genius is actually the product of ten thousand hours of practice; in other words, just plain hard work.

History is littered with examples. Here’s 14 of them.

1. Walt Disney:

The name Walt Disney is now a byword for fantasy. But the man who created Mickey Mouse and Disneyland was once fired by a newspaper editor because, “he lacked imagination and had no good ideas.”

2 Albert Einstein:

He’s often referred to as a genius but he actually failed the entrance examinations for the Zurich Polytechnic School and when he finally graduated he was out of work for two years. That must have seemed like a long while to him but in a relatively short time he won the Nobel Prize and changed the face of modern physics.

3. Thomas Edison:

In his early years, a teacher called him ‘addled’ and told him he was “too stupid to learn anything.” Later in life he made at least one thousand unsuccessful attempts at inventing the light bulb. His response to his repeated failures? ‘I have not failed. I’ve just found a thousand ways it won’t work.’

4. Oprah Winfrey:

Most people know Oprah as one of the most successful women in the world. But it wasn’t an easy road; the daughter of an unmarried mother, she suffered abuse at the hands of her cousin, uncle and a family friend and was herself pregnant at just 14.

She was fired from her job as a television reporter because she was “unfit for TV.”

She went on to host the most popular talk show in television history and now has a net worth of almost 3 billion dollars.

5. Jerry Seinfeld:

The first time the young Seinfeld walked on stage at a comedy club, he froze and was jeered off of the stage. It would have finished most aspiring comics. But he went back the very next night, completed his set and the rest is history.

6. Fred Astaire:

In his first screen test, a casting director at MGM noted: “Can’t act. Can’t sing. Slightly bald. Can dance a little.” Astaire went on to make over thirty movies and was named ‘The Greatest Male Actor of All Time’ by the American Film Institute.

7. Vincent Van Gogh:

During his lifetime, Van Gogh sold only one painting, (‘The Red Vineyard at Arles’ now in the Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts in Moscow).

He completed over 800 paintings but died a pauper. Today, his lifetime’s work is valued in hundreds of millions of dollars.

8. Steven Spielberg:

One of the most prolific and successful filmmakers of all time, the man who brought us “Schindler’s List,” “Jaws,” “E.T.” and “Jurassic Park’ was rejected from the University of Southern California School of Theater, Film and Television three times.

Following his outrageously successful career, the film school awarded him an honorary degree in 1994 and two years later, he became a trustee of the university. So there.

9. Stephen King:

King actually did give up. His first book, “Carrie”, received thirty rejections, and eventually he just threw it in the trash. His wife fished it out and encouraged him to try again; King is now one of the best-selling authors of all time.

10. Jack London:

The author of iconic novels such as “White Fang” and “The Call of the Wild” received six hundred rejection slips before finally getting his first short story accepted. That’s persistence.

11. Elvis Presley:

Back in 1954, Jimmy Denny, manager of the Grand Ole Opry, told the young Elvis: “You ain’t going nowhere, son. You ought to go back to driving a truck.”

Luckily for us, Elvis didn’t get all shook up about it. The King went on to become a legend. Jimmy Who?

12. The Beatles:

When they were just starting out, a recording company rejected their audition tape with the words: “We don’t like their sound, and anyway guitar music is on the way out.’

13. Michael Jordan:

The best basketball player of all time was once cut from his high school basketball team.

Jordan didn’t let this setback stop him.

In fact, Michael was never fazed by failure: “I have missed more than 9,000 shots in my career. I have lost almost 300 games. On 26 occasions I have been entrusted to take the game winning shot, and I missed. I have failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.”

14. Babe Ruth:

The Sultan of Swat established a record for career home runs (714 during his career), but he also held the record for strikeouts as well.

When asked about this he said, “Every strike brings me closer to the next home run.”

So the lesson is: never give up.

If you have a dream hold it close and never take your eyes off the prize.

Because if you fail, it’s not failure.

It’s just practice.

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COLIN FALCONER