Rejection Stories Of 9 Highly Successful People That Will Inspire You To Succeed

Rejection /rɪˈdʒek.ʃən/, according to Cambridge Dictionary, it refers to the act of refusing to accept, use, or believe someone or something.

In other words, rejection is other people’s disapproval about your ideas, beliefs or actions. Why we bothered so much about other people’s approvals? I know, often it can be painful and emotional to deal with rejections.

I can’t even recall how many times I was rejected from job applications, interviews and business ventures.

For me it was disappointing and depressing and my emotions got very intense. I couldn’t stop doubting about my own abilities — “Am I not good enough?” was the constant question that’s bothering me.

I started to self-pity and despair. Gradually, I closed myself off, never wanted to take any steps that might lead me to be rejected.

In that two years, I didn’t get much rejections thanks to my monotonous life; however it didn’t bring me any satisfaction; my fears of rejections limited my own worth, growth, abilities, my dreams and more.

I rigid myself in my own mental box that defined by others. It was completely silly, and one day I decided to jump out from my little rigid mental box, I want to experience different emotions again, it might be painful but it tells me I am alive.

Living a fulfilling life became my purpose, taste all the sweet, sour, bitter, spicy and salty things in life became my mission. I told myself on that day “this journey will not be easy, I will get many rejections, but I can do it, I will learn how to deal with it gracefully and better myself day by day.”

During the past years, rejections never got lesser, but I learnt how to get used to rejections.

I still felt sad or disappointed from time to time, but those feelings didn’t last long; I no longer take rejections personally, no longer indulge myself in the feelings of self-pity, and no longer take it negatively.

If you know how to deal with rejections well, you can turn them to the powerful energy that will push you to achieve your goals in life.

I was very interested to know how the highly successful people handle the rejections, therefore I’ve studied the rejection stories from the 9 highly successful people as following; they are the great proof on how to turn rejections to the fuels that drove them to succeed.

1. Vincent Van Gogh

“I dream of painting and then I paint my dream.” — Vincent Van Gogh

Van Gogh is now one of the most well-known post-Impressionist painters; it’s hard to imagine he was not widely appreciated during his life time. Van Gogh only started painting when he was twenty-seven years old, during his time he didn’t enjoy fame and notoriety like other famous artists; but he struggled to make a living from his paintings.

When he alive, he only sold one of his paintings Red Vineyards at Arles for a small amount of money. Being an artist, it’s considered the biggest rejections, when your works receive little to none attention and recognition.

Many people often criticized Van Gogh’s paintings as being too dark and lacking of the bright liveliness seen in Impressionist paintings of the time.

Guess many people might quit painting if they were in such situation, but Van Gogh continued painting, and he has produced 900 pieces of arts during his lifetime.

Van Gogh never seeing his talent being recognized himself, nor dreaming that he would be such great source of inspiration for subsequent generations of artists. After a decades after his death, his art became well recognized and he became one of the most famous and influential artists all time.

2. Walt Disney

“All our dreams can come true — if we have the courage to pursue them.” — Walt Disney

Walt Disney was fired from the one of his first animation jobs at Kansas City Star in 1919, and “lacked imagination and had no good ideas” was the reason got him fired by his editor.

Things didn’t get smoother for him after that, Disney started an animation studio, Laugh-O-Gram Studio, however it went bankruptcy in 1923 before practically any of his cartoons were released.

He never gave up his dream; Disney moved to Hollywood, after that Disney and his brother Roy formed the Disney Brothers Studio‍ — ‌which later became The Walt Disney Company‍, which became one of the best-known motion-picture production companies in the world.

3. Colonel Harland Sanders

“One has to remember that every failure can be a stepping stone to something better.” — Colonel Sanders

Colonel Harland Sanders, the founder of Kentucky Fried Chicken, was fired from a variety of jobs before he started his chicken business.

He was forty years old when he started cooking chicken in his roadside Shell Service Station in 1930. He took more than a decade to ‘perfect’ his ‘Secret Recipe’ and during that time he was set back by the Great Depression, fires and World War II, but Sanders didn’t let anything or anyone to defeat him.

Finally his chicken got popular, but he was still rejected more than 1,000 times before finding his first partner.

Failures and rejections never defeated Sanders, instead he created the world’s second-largest restaurant chain.

4. Ferruccio Lamborghini

“I never planned on getting into the automobile-industry, but I knew a better car could be built.” — Ferruccio Lamborghini

In 1958, Ferruccio Lamborghini, a considerably successful tractor business man bought a Ferrari, and he was happily indulging his passion for cars and being a good mechanics, shortly after he tried racing with his Ferrari, he started to notice the flaws that he could improve.

He has decided to tell Enze Ferrari about the imperfections he found in 1960. But during that time, Enzo Ferrari’s cars were the top-of-the-line in luxury sports cars, he didn’t appreciate the tractor mechanic’s suggestions and rejected Lamborghini.

Lamborghini turned Ferrari’s rejections as his driving force to start work on his own type of sports car. He began He began designing different models of his own brand. It only took him four months to launch his first model.

Many people believed that it was impossible and too risky to build a car as great as Ferrari’s, but he proved them wrong.

5. Elvis Presley

“Ambition is a dream with a V8 engine.” — Elvis Presley

Elvis Presley’, one of the most influential singers all time. His influence was enormously important to both rock and country music, but this iconic singer also was rejected early in his career.

In 1954, Elvis took his style of music to the Nashville’s Grand Ole Opry, but far from revolutionizing the music world with his hip-shaking performance and dynamic new sound.

After the performance at Grand Ole Opry, The concert hall manager told he that he should be better off driving trucks (his former career).

6. Soichiro Honda

“I just wouldn’t give in, no way.” — Soichiro Honda

Soichiro Honda was inspired to leave home at age of 15 to become an apprentice at an automobile repair shop for the love of automobiles.

He was a hard worker and had a great technical expertise and strong passion towards to cars. But things was not that easy for Honda as well, due to the lack of formal education, he was only assigned to cook meals and clean shops.

So he started to further his study and improve his skills, he began racing but racing brought huge damage to his body when his car crashed during the rally, that forced him to quit racing.

After recovering from the injury, Soichiro Honda began to develop and produce piston rings according to his requirements.

He approached Toyota Company to sell his piston rings, but he was turned back with great disappointments. They have rejected his invention because of the poor quality standard.

The rejection didn’t lead him to a great depression, instead he focused on his goal and decided to build his own factory. Things went uphill.

7. Steve Jobs

“I’d been rejected, but I was still in love, so I decided to start over.” ― Steve Jobs

Jobs was fired from the company he created when he was in his 30s. He said in a speech before “I was out- and very publicly out”, “What had been the focus of my entire adult life was gone, and it was devastating.”

During his time away, he never given up on innovations and pursuing his dream, nearly a decade later, Jobs had integral role in the birth of iPod, and together with a team of employees, they brought iPod to life, that changed the destiny of Apple drastically.

8. Stephen King

“Optimism is a perfectly legitimate response to failure.” ― Stephen King

It was 1973, when Stephen King was writing his first novel Carrie, he was broke, he lived in a trailer and drove a rust-bucket Buick; his wife worked shift at Dunkin Donuts while he taught English at a private high school in eastern Mainer.

Difficult life situations never stopped him from writing, he finally finished the novel, however, when he sent it to 30 publishers, they all turn it down.

When he finished the novel, he sent it to 30 publishers. They all turned it down.

That was a time; most of writers were vulnerable as they couldn’t realize their ambitions and dreams easily. Many times he wanted to give up on his childhood dreams for his children and wife, but King’s wife was very supportive, he finally got his first book publisher and since then he has published more than 50 novels, became the 19th best-selling author of all time.

9. Jack Ma

“If you don’t give up, you still have a chance. Giving up is the greatest failure.” — Jack Ma

Jack Ma once mentioned that he was the man very familiar with rejections. If you are ever wanted to give up, remember this guy. He applied 10 times for Harvard and got rejected.

He applied for 30 jobs in his home town, got rejected from every one.

One time, he applied for a job at KFC with another 23 people, and all of them have been accepted, but not him.

The same time, he tried to get to the police force, 4 out 5 applicants been accepted, but not Ma.

Ma and his cousin once queued more than two hours for an interview to be a waiter in a four star hotel, despite the lower score of his cousin, he got in but Ma was rejected again.

In 2001, he went to raise $5 million from venture capitalists in the USA and got rejected.

It is definitely not easy to deal with all those setbacks; many of us might just choose an easy way out instead of persistently pursuing our true callings.

But no series of failures, rejections kept Ma from achieving their dreams.

Now Jack Ma is the richest man in China. He founded Alibaba in 1995, which is now the largest e-commerce platform. In his Forbes profile, his net worth is $40.7B.

What he learnt from rejection was that you must believe in yourself, even if other people think your ideas are stupid.

Whenever you got rejected, just recall those highly successful people’s stories, none of them achieve their dreams and ambitions without having rejections and failures. Nothing can stop you from achieving your dreams in life.

Key takeaways here:

· Believe in yourself

· Don’t let rejections knock your down

· Rejections create opportunities

· Learn from it

· Be comfortable with it

· Handle rejections gracefully not negatively

· Never give up

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