Month: September 2017

As you have probably realized, I get a lot of inspiration from reading positive and uplifting authors that I find online.  I usually search out those that in particular would provide motivation and determination to my children.  Like everyone, my children battle setbacks and shortcomings from time to time.  I always try to teach them that hard work and a positive mental attitude best prepare them for rebounding from those setbacks and help ensure a positive path moving forward.  Here is an interesting portion of an article I found through the online version of Inc. magazine by author Scott Mautz regarding overcoming failures in your life:

Ask yourself, “What if these people had let their failure shut them down?”

1. The greatest basketball player of all time, Michael Jordan, was cut from his high school team.
2. Walt Disney was fired from his job at a newspaper early in his career–they said he lacked imagination.
3. Steven Spielberg was rejected from film school three times.
4. John Grisham’s first book, “A Time to Kill”, was rejected twenty-eight times.
5. Albert Einstein had the label “mentally slow” put on his permanent school record.
6. Henry Ford’s first two automobile companies failed.
7. Oprah Winfrey was fired from an early job as a television news anchor.
8. Jerry Seinfeld was booed off stage in his first stand-up comedy appearance.
9. Sir James Dyson suffered through 5,126 failed prototypes before he landed on the first working Dyson vacuum.
10. Elvis Presley was fired from the Grand Ole Opry and was told to go back to truck driving.
11. Colonel Harland Sanders of KFC fame was rejected over 1000 times before finding a franchise partner.

Scott adds:  “Feel better? You should. We’ve all been there. It’s all in your frame of reference and determination to keep moving forward, which is in your control.”

 

 

 

In society, we place strong emphasis on celebrity status.  There are countless websites, blogs, publications, and television programs devoted to celebrities, athletes, and other significant personalities. We follow their wealth, their politics, their trends of clothing, and even their everyday activities.  These “stars” become the envy of many who strive to attain the same status by emulating what they see in the media.  Many times, in so doing, people lose who it is that they are in order to be more like those that they see.  It seems everyone wants to be famous.

Author Emily Smith recently wrote an article for the New York Times titled “You’ll Never Be Famous – And That’s O.K.”  It’s a really good read but if you want to get the quick version, it is all summed up in the last sentence of the article:

“You don’t have to change the world or find your one true purpose to lead a meaningful life.  A good life is a life of goodness – and that’s something anyone can aspire to, no matter their dreams or circumstances.”

She adds, “The most meaningful lives are often not the the extraordinary ones.  They’re the ordinary ones lived with dignity.”

I’d like to challenge my kids to see the importance and relevance of who they are just like they are.  Not to kill their motivation for success because striving to reach your potential is so vitally important. Instead, I’d like them to just know that what they see in the media is not reflective of true success.  Living productive lives, enriching those that we can influence through our everyday walk, and finding a feeling of contentment within the realm of reasonable expectations is a much better definition of being “famous”.