Setbacks
Many of the greats we admire had to face great criticism and setback. Here are a few examples:
Beethoven’s music teacher once said, “As a composer, he is hopeless.”
When Thomas Edison was a boy his teachers told him he was too stupid to learn anything.
FW Woolworth got a job in a dry goods store when he was 21 but his employers would not let him wait on a customer because he “didn’t have enough sense.”
A newspaper editor fired Walt Disney because he had “no good ideas.”
Caruso’s music teacher told him, “You can’t sing, you have no voice.”
Leo Tolstoy flunked out of college.
Werner von Braun flunked 9th grade algebra.
Admiral Richard E. Byrd had retired from the Navy as “unfit for service” until he flew over both poles.
Einstein was four years old before he could speak and seven before he could read.
Isaac Newton did poorly in grade school.
Abraham Lincoln entered the Black Hawk War as a Captain and came out a private.
Louise May Alcott was told by an editor that she could never write anything that had popular appeal.
Winston Churchill failed the sixth grade.
And if they can make it, why can’t you?