Are You Tired of Failures?

Are you already tired of all the failures that you have made?

Have you been hurt so many times because of losing?

Do you already feel frustrated, disappointed and downhearted?

Hmm.. You are not alone. Let me give you some nice trivia!

Beethoven’s music teacher once told him that as a composer, he was hopeless.

Winston Churchill failed the 6th grade.

John Creasy, the English novelist who wrote 564 books, was rejected 753 times before he became established.

Charles Darwin’s father told him he would amount to nothing and would be a disgrace to himself and his family.

Walt Disney was fired by the editor of a newspaper because he, Disney, had “no good ideas”.

When Thomas Edison was a boy his teacher told him he was too stupid to learn anything.

Einstein was four-years-old before he spoke. He spoke haltingly until nine years of age. He was advised to drop out of High School. And his teachers told him he would never amount to much.

Henry Ford’s first two automobile businesses failed.

Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard’s early failed products included a lettuce-picking machine and an electric weight-loss machine.

Michael Jordan was cut from his high school basketball team.

Ray Krok failed as a real estate salesperson before discovering the McDonald’s idea.

R.H. Macy failed 7 times before his store in New York caught on.

Akio Morita and Masaru Ibuka sold only 100 of an automatic rice cooker which burned the rice. Later, they built a cheap tape recorder for Japanese schools. This was the foundation of Sony Corp.

Isaac Newton failed at running the family farm and did poorly in school.

Babe Ruth struck out 1,330 times (but he also hit 714 home runs).

Steven Spielberg dropped out of high school in his sophomore year. He was persuaded to come back and placed in a learning disabled class. He lasted a month.

The artist Whistler failed chemistry, failed at West Point and failed at engineering before turning his hand to art.

F. W. Woolworth got a job in a dry good store when he was 21, but his employer would not let him wait on customers because he “didn’t have enough sense.”

The great baseball pitcher Cy Young lost almost as many games as he won.

-http://creatingminds.org/quotes/failure.htm

Though failures are indeed painful, these people did not let their failures stop them from achieving greater things! Instead, they made these failures into stepping stones to achieve myriad victories!

As one saying goes:

Our greatest glory is not in never falling but in rising every time we fall. ~Confucius

And quoting Sherlock Holmes in “The Adventures of the Three Students” when he found out that a student did a very awful thing, yet Sherlock Holmes saw how repentant he was and was willing to change:

For once you have fallen low. Let us see, in the future, how high you can rise. 

I hope this has encouraged you today, my friend!

© 2011 Erickson Ibana

An Unrecognized Genius

(A conversation between Sherlock Holmes and Dr. John Watson)

“My mind,” he said, “rebels at stagnation. Give me problems, give me work, give me the most abstruse cryptogram, or the most intricate analysis, and I am in my own proper atmosphere. I can dispense then with artificial stimulants. But I abhor the dull routine of existence. I crave for mental exaltation. That is why I have chosen my own particular profession, or rather created it, for I am the only one in the world.”

“The only unofficial detective?” I said, raising my eyebrows.

“The only unofficial consulting detective,” he answered. “I am the last and highest court of appeal in detection. When Gregson, or Lestrade, or Athelney Jones are out of their depths–which, by the way, is their normal state–the matter is laid before me. I examine the data, as an expert, and pronounce a specialist’s opinion. I claim no credit in such cases. My name figures in no newspaper. The work itself, the pleasure of finding a field for my peculiar powers, is my highest reward.

(Article from The Science of Deduction by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

I really admire Sherlock Holmes, a genius, a master in crime deduction, the expert. But the thing about him that I admire most is his desire not to be recognized for his ingenuity. He was contented in just solving the crime, and giving the solution to the peculiarity of the case.

There were only a few now who possess this kind of attitude. The norm says that once you’ve done something, you need to be recognized and be awarded. (Well, sometimes you really need to be recognized, and be compensated accordingly, most especially if you’re waiting for that hard-earned monthly salary and your family depends on that for a living!)

But sometimes, even as hard as you try, you didn’t get recognized… then you eventually get disappointed, frustrated, downhearted.

Good thing there is Someone who sees your good deeds. 1 Samuel 16:7 says:

The LORD does not look at the things man looks at. Man looks at the outward appearance, but the LORD looks at the heart.

God sees your motives, even the deepest desires of your heart!

It is better to trust and take refuge in the Lord than to put confidence in man.

Psalm 118:8

Take heart my friend, God sees!

© 2011 Erickson Ibana