Don’t let anyone, or any rejection, keep you from what you want.
– Ashley Tisdale
In 1919, Walt Disney was fired from the Kansas City Star. According to his editor, he “lacked imagination and had no good ideas.” Disney would later found the Walt Disney Productions, now known as The Walt Disney Company, a company that has become one of the best-known motion picture producers in the world. Disney became particularly noted as a film producer and a popular showman, as well as an innovator in animation and theme park design. He and his staff created some of the world’s most well-known fictional characters including Mickey Mouse, for whom Disney himself provided the original voice. Years later, The Walt Disney Company bought ABC which owned The Kansas City Star, the same outfit that fired Disney ‘for lacking imagination and good ideas’
Talk show host, actress, producer and philanthropist, Oprah Winfrey, is best known for her show, The Oprah Winfrey Show. But before her rise to fame Oprah was removed from her job as a news reporter for Baltimore’s WJZ-TV. Oprah, who now runs her own TV network, the Oprah Winfrey Network (OWN) is one of the most influential women in the world. She is said to be currently North America’s only black billionaire and the greatest black philanthropist in American history.
Chicken Soup for the Soul by Jack Canfield and Mark Victor Hansen was rejected by over 140 publishers before it was finally accepted. The Chicken Soup for the Soul book series, which currently has nearly 200 titles and 112 million copies in print in over 40 languages. According to USA Today, Chicken Soup for the Soul and several of the series titles were among the top 150 best-selling books of the last 15 years
American film director, screenwriter, producer, and business magnate, Steven Spielberg’s application to attend the film school at University of Southern California School of Theater, Film and Television was rejected on two different occasions but he went ahead to become one of the most popular and influential filmmakers in the history of cinema. In 2006, he was named as the most powerful and influential figure in the motion picture industry by Premiere, an American and New York City-based film magazine. He is on Time Magazine’s list of the 100 Most Important People of the Century. Life Magazine named him the most influential person of his generation and in 2009, Boston University awarded him an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters degree. Regarded as the highest grossing filmmaker of all time; his films having made nearly $8 billion internationally, Spielberg was awarded an honorary degree by the University of Southern California (the same university that had rejected his application for admission) in 1994. He became a trustee of the university in 1996. This was after he had become famous.
In 1963, Poitier became the first black person to win an Academy Award for Best Actor for his role in Lilies of the Field. In 1967, he starred in three successful films: To Sir, with Love, In the Heat of the Night and Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner; making him the top box-office star of that year. Before his achievements, it is reported that a casting director had made this statement to Poitier, “Why don’t you stop wasting people’s time and go out and become a dishwasher or something?” In 1999, the American Film Institute named Poitier among the Greatest Male Stars of All Time, ranking 22nd on the list of 25. On August 12, 2009, he was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the United States of America’s highest civilian honor, by President Barack Obama.
The foregoing stories tell us not to give up in the face of rejection, embarrassment or failure. You may be down but you don’t have to be out. You may be down and out but you can still bounce back stronger. So how do you deal with rejection? Realise that the fact that an individual/organisation is not interested in you doesn’t mean the rest of the world is also not interested in you. It is equally important to settle it with yourself that you will not define or see yourself based on another person’s opinion of you or their attitude toward you.
YOU ARE UNIQUE!
YOU HAVE YOUR OWN CROWD THAT IS ROOTING FOR YOU!
YOUR BEST IS ON THE WAY!
“What lies behind us, and what lies before us, are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.”
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
Darasimi Oshodi is a blogger. Read his blogs at darasimioshodi.blogspot.com
Follow him on twitter @Aristotle274
The views expressed above are solely that of the author and not of Omojuwa.com or its associates.
