How can rejection and failure be encouraging? By learning how common it is and how every successful person has dealt with it.

Yes, all of us experience rejection and failure. I’m convinced a great deal of success comes down to simply not giving up on what you really want.

Our greatest weakness lies in giving up. The most certain way to succeed is always to try just one more time
–Edison

Look at these stories and Be Encouraged.

Modeling agencies told her she should consider becoming a secretary. —Marilyn Monroe.

A college drop out started a company called Traf-O-Data. At first the software didn’t work. Then, it barely made money. Oh, yeah, then he started another company and is now the richest man in the world. —Bill Gates

He was awkward on the violin. Teachers said he was too stupid to compose. —Beethoven

“Can’t act. Can’t sing. Slightly bald. Can dance a little.” — From Fred Astaire’s first screen test.

“So we went to Atari and said, ‘Hey, we’ve got this amazing thing, even built with some of your parts, and what do you think about funding us? Or we’ll give it to you. We just want to do it. Pay our salary, we’ll come work for you.’ And they said, ‘No.'”

“So then we went to Hewlett-Packard, and they said, ‘Hey, we don’t need you. You haven’t got through college yet.'” — Apple Computer founder Steve Jobs on attempts to get Atari and HP interested in his and Steve Wozniak’s personal computer.

Fired as a contributor to the San Francisco Examiner because, he was told, “You just don’t know how to use the English language.”–Rudyard Kipling

Failed at starting his own business three times. Tried again and became one of the richest men in the world while making it possible for the average family to own a car. – Henry Ford

Put aside her passion for decades but in her seventies became one of the best-known American painters of all time. — Grandma Moses

Why not you?

Why not now?

Questions for comments: Who told you no, or you weren’t good enough? How did you overcome that?

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