Some Famous People Who Overcame Rejection

12/15/2019

If you are going to be successful, you are going to need to learn how to deal with rejection. Rejection is a natural part of life.

Everyone who has ever made it to the top has had to endure rejections. You just have to realize that they are not personal. Consider the following success stories:

Don't Give Up Your Dream Amidst Rejection

Novelist Stephen King almost made a multimillion-dollar mistake when he threw his Carrie manuscript in the garbage because he was tired of the 30 rejections he had received. "We are not interested in science fiction which deals with negative utopias," he was told. "They do not sell." Luckily, his wife fished it out of the garbage. Eventually Carrie was printed by another publisher, sold more than 4 million copies, and was made into a blockbuster film.
In 1998, Google cofounders Sergey Brin and Larry Page approached Yahoo! and suggested a merger. Yahoo! could have snapped up the company for a handful of stock, but instead they suggested that the young Googlers keep working on their little school project and come back when they had grown up. But look at Google now!
Even the first Harry Potter book, Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, was rejected by 12 publishers before it found a home. Because she didn't give up, J.K. Rowling is now one of the richest people in England.

Steven Spielberg applied and was rejected two times by the prestigious USC film school. He ended up at Cal State University in Long Beach. He later went on to produce and direct some of the greatest blockbuster movies of all time--E.T., Lincoln, Saving Private Ryan, Jurassic Park, Jaws, The Color Purple, and Raiders of the Lost Ark—ultimately giving Spielberg a net worth of $3 billion. Twenty-seven years later, after Spielberg had become famous, USC awarded him an honorary doctoral degree, and two years after that he became a trustee of the university.
Colonel Sanders believed he had a great chicken recipe. He went from one restaurant to another, selling his chicken recipe. He was rejected 1,009 times! But he didn't stop. One restaurant finally bought it and Kentucky Fried Chicken (KFC) was born.
Jack Canfield and Mark Hansen wrote a book. Like any other author, they went about searching for a publisher. Their manuscript was rejected 154 times before they finally found a publisher. The book has now sold over 53 million copies.