In 1962, four nervous young musicians played their first
record audition for the executives of the Decca Recording company. The
executives were not impressed. While turning down this group of musicians, one
executive said, "We don't like their sound. Groups of guitars are on the
way out." The group was called The Beatles.
In 1944, Emmeline Snively, director of the Blue Book
Modeling Agency, told modeling hopeful Norma Jean Baker, "You'd better
learn secretarial work or else get married." She went on and became
Marilyn Monroe.
In 1954, Jimmy Denny, manager of the Grand Ole Opry fired
a singer after one performance. He told him, "You ain't goin' nowhere son.
You ought to go back to drivin' a truck." He went on to become the most
popular singer in America, named Elvis Presley.
When Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone in
1876, it did not ring off the hook with calls from potential backers. After
making a demonstration call, President Rutherford Hayes said, "That's an
amazing invention, but who would ever want to use one of them?"
When Thomas Edison invented the light bulb, he tried over
2000 experiments before he got it to work. A young reporter asked him how it
felt to fail so many times. He said, "I never failed once. I invented the
light bulb. It just happened to be a 2000-step process."
In the 1940's, another young inventor named Chester
Carlson took his idea to 20 corporations, including some of the biggest in the
country. They all turned him down. In 1947 - after seven long years of
rejections! He finally got a tiny company in Rochester, New York, the Haloid
Company, to purchase the rights to his invention, an electrostatic
paper-copying process. Haloid became Xerox Corporation we know today.
Wilma Rudolph was the 20th of 22 children. She was born
prematurely and her survival was doubtful. When she was 4 years old, she
contacted double pneumonia and scarlet fever, which left her with a paralyzed
left leg. At age 9, she removed the metal leg brace she had been dependent on
and began to walk without it. By 13 she had developed rhythmic walk, which
doctors said was a miracle. That same year she decided to become a runner. She
entered a race and came in last. For the next few years every race she entered,
she came in last. Everyone told her to quit, but she kept on running. One day
she actually won a race. And then another. From then on she won every race she
entered. Eventually this little girl, who was told she would never walk again,
went on to win three Olympic gold medals.
Character cannot be developed in ease and quiet. Only
through experiences of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened, vision
cleared, ambition inspired and success achieved. You gain strength, experience
and confidence by every experience where you really stop to look fear in the
face. You must do the thing you cannot do. And remember, the finest steel gets
sent through the hottest furnace.
