“She’s not photogenic enough for film.” She was too plain looking. Who was it? A 12 year old Julie Andrews.
A book by an unknown author was rejected by 12 different publishers. It was a story about a boy who had wizard powers. It was finally picked up by a small London publisher, and J.K. Rowling had the first Harry Potter published.
“We don’t like their sound.” Rejected. Decca Records turned down the contract. Who was this band whose sound was so bad? A little startup band called The Beatles.
Fired by a newspaper editor because he said he “lacked imagination”. I love this one. Walt Disney.
A kid was cut from the high school varsity basketball team in his sophomore year. Who was it? A kid named Michael Jordan.
Edison “failed” 1,000 times before he finally came up with a workable light bulb. He had kept at it.
What’s your story? Are you ready to give up? How do you know, how can you tell, that if you just stick with something, it will work out, or if you are just wasting a bunch of time and effort? A person who “has what it takes” is the person who possesses an unshakable belief that their idea will succeed. It is called “self-efficacy”. It differs from self-confidence in that it is more specific, confidence in a specific ability rather than a general feeling of confidence. The person so possessed, who keeps at things until they achieve greatness, actually often times have somewhat low self-esteem because they are always driving themselves and never quite live up to their own high expectations. But they don’t give up, they have learned to be persistent, they know that persistence trumps the odds which favor failure.
You can avoid all failure by not taking any risks. Failures bypass success by not taking risks. Some are born with a confidence which allows them to shake off all rejecting thoughts, others develop a skill at a particular thing, and the skill feeds their confidence. If you fear the humiliation of being seen making mistakes, you’re doomed to mediocrity. So how do you really know if you are wasting your time? I guess you don’t. I guess you’re just going to have to take a chance, huh? Just keep in mind in whose company you will be, even the greatest achievers may have had doubts, but learned to overcome the doubts that related to one thing, and pursued that one passion with confidence that they could make it work. As Churchill said, never, ever give up.