NEVER GIVE UP! Don’t listen to the critics and the nay sayers. I have found that a lot of people only feel better about themselves when they tear someone else down. Eventually society will realize that they can amplify people’s accomplishments with support and encouragement. Until the day that realization is achieved and executed, I suppose the time-tested phrase, ‘Only the strong survive’, will remain to hold true. So, when you’re a little down on yourself and ready to throw in the towel, refer to this post and remember, even the most successful people have their critics. Perseverance and belief in yourself are the working parts of the motor that will drive you down the road toward your goals. Here are 19 of the most famous failures in our time that have succeeded. They’ve been through failure but were able to bounce back. When you truly know their stories, you’ll realize that achieving greatness isn’t something that comes easy whatsoever.
1. Abraham Lincoln:
It’s difficult to wrap your head around the fact that the great emancipator, the man who won the civil war and kept the union together, was faced with such an incredible failures, yet accomplished so much.
2. Charles Schulz:
In the height of ‘Peanuts’ popularity, comic strips, merchandise and product endorsements produced revenues of more than $1 billion per year. Schulz received the National Cartoonists Society’s Humor Comic Strip Award in 1962, the Society’s Elzie Segar Award in 1980, and was also the first two-time winner of their Reuben Award for 1955 and 1964, and their Milton Caniff Lifetime Achievement Award in 1999. On June 28, 1996, Schulz was honored with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, adjacent to Walt Disney’s.
3. Colonel Sanders:
“There’s no reason to be the richest man in the cemetery. You can’t do any business from there.” Fantastic words from the creator of one of the world’s most well-known fast food restaurants, Kentucky Fried Chicken.
4. Dr. Seuss:
This man has taught millions to read, and has been making several million dollars per year, even after his death.
5. Elvis Presley:
Go back to driving truck, or follow your dreams and become known as ‘The King of Rock & Roll’.
6. Federico Fellini:
Fellini was eventually considered one of the greatest and most influential filmmakers of the 20th century.
7. Fred Astaire:
His stage, film and television career spanned a total of 76 years, during which he made 31 musical films and several award-winning television specials. He was named the fifth Greatest Male Star of All Time by the American Film Institute.
8. Henry Ford:
By 1932, Ford was manufacturing one-third of all the world’s automobiles.
9. Jerry Seinfeld:
In 2005, Comedy Central named him the 12th-greatest stand-up comedian of all time.
10. J.K. Rowling:
The Harry Potter books have gained worldwide attention, won multiple awards, and sold more than 400 million copies. They have become the best-selling book series in history and the basis for a series of films which became the highest-grossing film series in history.
11. Lucille Ball:
Lucille Ball was nominated for an Emmy Award thirteen times and won four times. In 1977, Ball was among the first recipients of the Women in Film Crystal Award. She was also the recipient of the Golden Globe Cecil B. DeMille Award, the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Kennedy Center Honors and the Governors Award from the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences.
12. Michael Caine:
Caine is one of only two actors nominated for an Academy Award for acting in every decade from the 1960’s to 2000’s.
13. Sidney Poitier:
In 2002, thirty-eight years after receiving the Best Actor Award, Poitier was chosen by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to receive an Honorary Award, in recognition of his “remarkable accomplishments as an artist and as a human being.”
14. Stravinsky:
Stravinsky went on to have a prolific and successful career in the States, which expanded to include Hollywood movie soundtracks.
15. The Beatles:
According to the RIAA, the Beatles are the best-selling music artists in the United States, with 178 million certified units. In 2008, The Beatles topped Billboard magazine’s list of the all-time most successful “Hot 100” artists, and currently hold the record for most number-one hits on the Hot 100 chart with twenty.
16. Thomas Edison:
He developed many devices that greatly influenced life around the world, including the phonograph, the motion picture camera, and a long-lasting, practical electric light bulb. Dubbed “The Wizard of Menlo Park”, he was one of the first inventors to apply the principles of mass production and large-scale teamwork to the process of invention, and because of that, he is often credited with the creation of the first industrial research laboratory.
17. Van Gogh:
He was a Dutch artist whose work had a far-reaching influence on 20th-century art. In just over a decade he produced more than 2,100 artworks, including 860 oil paintings and more than 1,300 watercolors, drawings, sketches and prints. Nowadays you can pay as much as $152 million for a Van Gogh painting.
18. Walt Disney:
As a prominent figure within the American animation industry and throughout the world, he is regarded as a cultural icon, known for his influence and contributions to entertainment during the 20th century.
19. Winston Churchill:
Widely regarded as one of the greatest wartime leaders of the 20th century, Churchill was also an officer in the British Army, a historian, a writer, and an artist. He won the Nobel Prize in Literature, and was the first person to be made an honorary citizen of the United States.
Life doesn’t seem so tough when you take into account all of these great cultural influences and icons having negative comments thrown their way. It goes to show that people who make a difference in the world really have one major thing in common… They didn’t listen to the those that would degrade them or hold them back. They chose to rise above and use it as a driving force in achieving greatness. Keep your head up and do everything within your power to follow in the footsteps of these great individuals.