What do Steve Jobs, Madonna, Walt Disney and Oprah Winfrey have in common?
Oprah Winfrey was fired from her first radio presenter role and told she was “Unfit for TV and too emotionally involved”
Walt Disney was fired as a cartoonist from the Kansas City Star in 1919 because, his editor said, he “lacked imagination and had no good ideas.”
J.K. Rowlings was fired from the London office of Amnesty International because she spent too much time writing stories on her work computer.
Madonna was fired on her first day of her first job at Dunkin’ Donuts in Times Square, for squirting jelly filling all over a customer.
Thomas Edison was fired from financial services company Western Union for secretly conducting experiments in the office at night, after spilling acid that ate through the floor and onto his boss’ desk on the floor below.
Jack Ma didn’t get fired as he couldn’t get a job. He applied to 30 jobs and was rejected from all of them. He was one of 24 applicants for the first KFC in China. All the other 23 were hired. He was the only one that wasn't. So he launched Alibaba instead.
Steve Jobs was fired from his own company, Apple.
For each, rejection was the key to their success. Each let failure steer them, not sink them.
As Steve Jobs said: “I didn’t see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life”
Steve returned to build Apple into the first trillion dollar company in the world. In 26 years later in 2011, John Sculley (The man responsible for Steve Jobs leaving Apple) called him “The greatest CEO ever.”
How much of your true potential are you missing by doing what you’re doing today?
If you’re in a job, ask what would you do if you lost your job…
If you’re in a business, ask what you would do if you fired yourself from the role you’re in…
Magic lies on the other side of fear. Beyond the ordinary is the extraordinary.
“We must be willing to get rid of the life we’ve planned, so as to have the life that is waiting for us.” - Joseph Campbell
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