Pick Yourself Up

Can you stop to imagine what would happen if we as the human race did not follow these words when we have failed at something: "Pick yourself up, dust yourself off and start all over again?"
This song was written way back in 1936 and recorded by many such as Nat King Cole and Frank Sinatra and was even in a movie with Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers called Swing Time, where Fred pretended to have two left feet so that Ginger would teach him how to dance.  

For every one of my failures, I know that I have grown from them. At first it may not have seemed that way.  There is a voice in most of us that is strong and it is telling you not to quit.  Quitters don't win.  Sometimes it is simply going at your goal from a different angle and sometimes it is a matter of taking your goal through different doors of opportunities.  Be creative!

Just to give you a few examples of some people who believed in themselves and did not give up let me list them with a short blurb of their failure/success stories:

Walt Disney was fired from the newspaper where he worked by the editor who told him that he lacked imagination and had no good ideas.  

Elvis Presley was told by the manager of the Grand Ole Opry that he was fired after his first and only performance and told him, "You ain't goin' nowhere, son!"

Michael Jordan was cut from his high school basketball team by the coach who told him that he lacked skill.

Steven Spielberg got rejected three times from the University of Southern California Film and Theater College due to poor high school grades.  So, he finally applied elsewhere, only to drop out and start an extremely successful  directing career all on his own.

Oprah Winfrey was told that she was unfit for TV. (Is she still the richest woman in America?)

Stephen King was rejected 30 times for Carrie and JK Rowling was rejected 12 times for Harry Potter.  (There is HOPE!)

Thomas Edison was told by his teacher that he was just too stupid to learn anything.  ("Sticks and stones may break my bones," but your words somehow made me a stronger person!) 

Vincent Van Gogh sold only one picture to a friend in his lifetime.  And yet he still painted!  

This is just a handful of famous people and then there are millions of not so well knowns who continued on and picked themselves up, dusted themselves off and started all over again.  

"Success is not final, failure is not fatal:  it is the courage to continue that counts."  Winston Churchill

This is what we need to be teaching to our children.  (and hang on to this knowledge for ourselves, as well)