A lesson we can all learn from the founder of a $180 Billion Dollar Company.
Recently I read an awesome story about a man that was able to accomplish monumental success despite the fact that nobody believed he was valuable. His name is Jack Ma. “As a young man, Jack had failed in coursework and exit exams at school. He applied to his favorite universities numerous times and was never accepted. Later, he applied to 30 different jobs and was rejected every time. In one case, Jack was the only person not taken out of dozens of others before him. Along the way, he attempted two different business ventures, failing at both.
Over the next decade, Jack built what would become the world’s largest e-commerce company. Today, Alibaba is worth over $180 billion. But it would never have existed if Jack Ma had let any of his failures break his trust in himself. Instead, he let his belief that he would find a way define him.”
http://www.inc.com/quora/nobody-failed-harder-than-jack-ma-and-then-he-founded-his-180b-company.html
What I love about this story was Jacks belief in himself. He did not allow what the world thought of him to determine what he did with his life. For some reason, people did not like Jack on paper. Maybe because of his test scores, grades, and current credentials. Which honestly, maybe they were terrible and he really did look bad on paper. But that only proves my point further. The point that I am trying to make here is that what you can see on a resume or an application often leaves so much out of the equation. I believe there is so much more to each human being that cannot be put on a resume for a job, an application for school, etc. That being said, if when you put together an application for school, or a resume for a job, and send it out and all you ever get back is rejection. Here is your next step.
You can either believe that everyone is right and your not worth being hired, or being allowed to learn from this or that institution. Or, you can prove everyone wrong.
I hope you know yourself better than anyone else, if you don’t, then you need to figure that out before you try to do anything else. If you do, then you know what you are capable of and don’t need anyone else’s approval for anything. If you want to do something, do it. There is always another way. Just don’t leave whether you do something or not up to someone else. That should always be your choice, and if you want something, go get it, and if nobody believes in you, prove them wrong.
A few days ago I sat down with a cousin of mine to tell him about one of the most important days of my life. I told him about the day I realized that I had spent most of my life looking at life as something that I was apart of and it had rules that people had to follow and if you don’t follow those rules then you will likely end up making very small wages and not amount to much in life. The rules also state that the jobs you get are always up to what others think of you, so if you want to get a good job you better have a killer resume. In addition to that, when you do have a job, you better hope that your working for good people because its always up to others to give you that raise you so desperately need.
All of that came to a halt when I took a good long look at myself and realized that my views were so limited to what the world teaches us to believe. I realized that so much of my future was in hands of other people. I was able to understand fully what Steve Jobs was talking about when he said “ Life can be much broader once you discover one simple fact. And that is, Everything around you that you call life, was made up by people that were no smarter than you and you can change it. You can influence it. You can built your own things that other people can use. And the minute you understand that you can poke life and something will pop out the other side, that may be the most important thing.” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oKkwbM3zM8M
I realized that I don’t need to get anyone’s permission to achieve what I want to achieve in my life. I don’t need someone to accept my resume, because its up to me, not them, to determine what I accomplish and what I become in my life. I went on to tell my cousin that if he goes out and applies to all of the companies that he wants to work for and they all reject him. That’s perfectly fine. Remember Jack Ma, it didn’t stop him. Its at that point he just needs to prove his value to the world. Your value should never be determined by anyone other than you.
Josh Kartchner ( Check out my facebook page and my youtube page!)
