There are many compilations but I found these examples in distractify.com. These are cases of rejection that should make us think twice about giving up in adversity. Some are better known than others:
- Walt Disney was fired from a paper because he ‘lacked imagination and had no good ideas’.
- JK Rowling suffered dozens of rejections, including Harper Collins, before somebody considered publishing Harry Potter.
- Oprah Winfrey was fired as an evening news reporter because she mixed too many emotions in her stories.
- George Orwell was told ‘It is impossible to sell animal stories in the USA’. So they did not publish Animal Farm.
- Elvis Presley was told by a manager that he was better off sticking to his previous job of driving trucks in Memphis.
- Steve Jobs was fired from Apple. He was asked to go back, of course!
- Stephen King ‘s wife saved a manuscript of Carrie, which had been rejected thirty times and was in his trash.
- Marilyn Monroe was told she should consider becoming a secretary instead of modelling.
- Abraham Lincoln, I quote here the entire sentence: ‘Demoted from Captain to Private during war, failed as a businessman and lost as a political candidate several times before becoming President’.
- Madonna was also rejected, Andy Warhol was rejected by the Museum of Modern Art, New York, U2 was rejected by a record company, Sylvia Plath was requested to cut half of ‘Amnesiac’ by The New Yorker, and more…
If you’ve been rejected because of your imagination, rest assured, you are in good company!
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Dr Leandro Herrero is the CEO and Chief Organization Architect of The Chalfont Project [1], an international firm of organizational architects. He is the pioneer of Viral ChangeTM, a people Mobilizing Platform, a methodology that delivers large scale behavioural and cultural change in organizations, which creates lasting capacity for changeability.
Dr Herrero is also an Executive Fellow at the Centre for the Future of Organization, Drucker School of Management. An international speaker, Dr Herrero is available for virtual speaking engagements [2] and can be reached at: The Chalfont Project [3].
