SEVERAL "INSPIRING" STORIES

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 Modelling Agency,
told modelling 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 1940s, 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 paralysed 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 a 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.

*****

The Moral of the above Stories: 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.
A winner is not one who never fails, but one who NEVER QUITS!
In LIFE, remember that you pass this way only once!
let's live life to the fullest and give it our extreme best....

Adapted from the book "Chicken soup for the soul 2"
 Jack Jackenfield