Famous fails – get inspired by the ones that kept trying

Everyone likes to succeed.

We all hope that whatever we put our minds to will work out. But in reality, things don’t always go as planned. So you try, and try again, and while you might get a biiiit closer – you’re still not where you want to be.

If that’s you, and you’re feeling like you want to give up (or you’ve already thrown in the towel) we want to introduce you to some famous people who struggled to succeed, but refused to give up.

You could say they all had a strong growth mindset—just because what they were doing didn’t work the first, second or third time—they believed that with perseverance they’d get where they wanted to.

Famous fail #1: Beyonce

Before she became one of the biggest pop stars in history, Beyonce was a kid with a dream of making it big in the music world. When she was 12, her group ‘Girl’s Tyme’ appeared on a talent show and lost. But that didn’t stop her. With a bit more time, the group got signed to a major record label. But even then, the group had struggles that resulted in two of the members calling it quits. Dream dead right? No way – she kept pushing forward, and now she’s one of the most successful recording artists in history.

Famous fail #2: JK Rowling

Before she wrote what would become the highest selling children’s book of all time, Harry Potter (you might have heard of it), JK Rowling faced a heap of struggles that could have easily knocked her off the path to eventual success. Pushing through, she eventually finished her first book (it took her 5 years to write the Philosopher’s Stone), but she needed to find a publisher. After not one, not two, but twelve failed attempts to get published, the book was eventually released to almost immediate success. What kept her going? She believed people would want to read her story. She was very right.

Famous fail #3: George Lucas

Before we were introduced to lightsabers, Darth Vader and ‘the force’, Star Wars creator, George Lucas, was struggling to get a studio to make the film. He’d started off making a sci-fi film that had bombed, following it up with another film that had been a relative success. When it came to Star Wars, it was turned down multiple times before finally getting picked up (based on the completely unrelated film that had succeeded) and the rest is history.

So what does that tell us?

The common thread is that they each believed that they had something cool worth showing others and it was that self-belief that made them keep trying. They didn’t see things as failures, they saw them as setbacks on the road to eventual success.

The only way you can really fail at something is to never try because you think it’s too hard or beyond your abilities- that’s what’s called a ‘fixed mindset’.

Think about it this way – maybe there’s something that you really want to try doing, but you’re not sure if putting in the time and effort will pay off. So you don’t get started. But you keep wondering, ‘what if I’d given that a go?’, ‘I wonder what it would have been like?’.

You’ll fail to know if you never try.

On the flip side, let’s say you do the thing you want to try, but it still doesn’t work out even after you’ve put in a bucketload of effort. Does that mean that you’ve failed?

Not at all.

It just means you’ve tried something and discovered what doesn’t work. Maybe it was a technique you were trying, or a hobby or a potential career pathway – whatever it is that you’ve tried, you’re now aware of what doesn’t work, and you’re one step closer to finding what does. That’s putting a growth mindset into action.

So keep trying, and when things don’t go right, use that as fuel to push you forward, or into a new direction.