I had some amazing teachers as a child who inspired me. My second grade teacher, Mrs. Hayes immediately comes to mind. Oh, how I loved that woman! She was kind and patient, guiding and directing the 30 impressionable lives for the 9 months she had us. We learned how to add and subtract, all about the World in Social Studies and how to write in Cursive. But we learned so much more from Mrs. Hayes. We learned trust and responsibility and that honesty was the best policy. I'll never forget Mrs. Hayes or that feeling when she would have me collect the milk money each morning. It was good to be so young and trusted to do an important task.
The famous people below overcame that feeling of failure and reached for the stars. They struggled with disappointment and criticism, but somewhere along the way in spite of discouragement... they excelled.
Abraham Lincoln, former US President first went into politics at the age of 23 when he campaigned for a seat in the Illinois General Assembly and failed. He then opened a general store which failed after only a few months.
Harry S. Truman, former US President was rejected by the US Military & Naval Academies due to his poor eyesight. At one point he was a clerk in a newspaper mailroom, and also an usher in a movie theater.
Michael Jordan, the most famous name in basketball was actually cut from his high school basketball team.
John Wayne - Before his successful acting career he was rejected from the United States Naval Academy.
Steven Spielberg - This household name dropped out of high school and applied to attend film school three times but was unsuccessful due to his C grade average.
Beethoven - His music teacher once told him that he was a hopeless composer.
Babe Ruth - This baseball legend struck out 1,330 times.
Henry Ford - The Ford Motor Co was Henry Ford’s third business, the first two didn’t work out.
Winston Churchill - This former British Prime Minister did poorly in school and had a speech impediment in his early years.
Walt Disney - He was fired by the editor of a newspaper for lacking in ideas.
Soichiro Honda - The founder of Honda was turned down for an engineering job by Toyota after World War Two.
Masaru Ibuka and Akio Morita - These two were the founders of Sony, but one of their first products was an electric rice cooker. They only sold 100 or so of these cookers because they tended to burn rice rather than cook it.
Charles Darwin - His father told him he would amount to nothing and would be a disgrace to himself and his family.
Albert Einstein - He learned to speak at a late age and performed poorly in school.
Thomas Edison - As a boy he was told by his teacher that he was too stupid to learn anything.
John Grisham - This best selling novelist’s first novel was rejected by sixteen agents and twelve publishing houses.
Isaac Newton - He failed at running the family farm and did poorly in school.
Henry Ford said,
“Failure is the opportunity to begin again more intelligently.”
