26 Successful People Who Failed At First. Here are 26 famous winners who started with a whimper.

.

We always hear the success stories but we rarely hear about the struggles and failures of the world’s most successful people. Here then, are 26 famous winners who started with a whimper.

1. Winston Churchill failed the sixth grade. He was defeated in every public office role he ran for. Then he became the British prime minister at the age of 62.

2. Thomas Edison’s teachers told him he was “too stupid to learn anything.” Edison also famously invented 1,000 light bulbs before creating one that worked.

3.Harland David Sanders, the famous KFC “Colonel,” couldn’t sell his chicken. More than 1,000 restaurants rejected him. But then one did, and today there are KFC restaurants bearing his image all over the world.

4. R.H. Macy had a history failing businesses, including a dud Macy’s in NYC. But Macy kept up the hard work and ended up with the biggest department store in the world.

5. Steven Spielberg was rejected from his dream school, the University of Southern California, three times. He sought out an education somewhere else and dropped out to be a director.

6. Charlie Chaplin’s act was rejected by executives because they thought it was too obscure for people to understand. But then they took a chance on Chaplin, who went on to become America’s first bona fide movie star.

7. Marilyn Monroe’s first contract with Columbia Pictures expired because they told her she wasn’t pretty or talented enough to be an actress.

8. Soichiro Honda was passed over for an engineering job at Toyota and left unemployed. But then he began making motorcycles, started a business and became a billionaire.

9. Vera Wang failed to make the U.S. Olympic figure-skating team. Then she became an editor at Vogue and was passed over for the editor-in-chief position. She began designing wedding gowns at 40 and today is the premier designer in the business, with a multi-billion dollar industry.

10. Walt Disney was fired by a newspaper editor because he “lacked imagination and had no good ideas.” Several more of his businesses failed before the premiere of his movie Snow White. Today, most childhoods wouldn’t be the same without his ideas.

11. Albert Einstein didn’t speak until age four and didn’t read until age seven. His teachers labeled him “slow” and “mentally handicapped.” But Einstein just had a different way of thinking. He later won the Nobel prize in physics.

12. Charles Darwin was considered an average student. He gave up on a career in medicine and was going to school to become a parson. But as Darwin studied nature, he found his calling.

13. Sir Isaac Newton was tasked with running the family farm but was a miserable failure. Newton was sent off to Cambridge University and became a physics scholar.

14. Dick Cheney flunked out of Yale twice. George W. Bush once joked: “So now we know –if you graduate from Yale, you become president. If you drop out, you get to be vice president.”

15. The first time Jerry Seinfeld went onstage, he was booed away by the jeering crowd. Eventually, he became a famous comic with one of the most-loved sitcoms ever.

16. In Fred Astaire’s first screen test, the judges wrote: “Can’t act. Can’t sing. Slightly bald. Can dance a little.” Astaire went on to be the most famous dancer of all time and won the hearts of American women forever.

17. After Sidney Poitier’s first audition, the casting director instructed him to just stop wasting everyone’s time and “go be a dishwasher or something.” He went on to win an Academy Award and is admired by actors everywhere.

18. Oprah Winfrey was fired from her television reporting job because they told her she wasn’t fit to be on screen. But Winfrey rebounded and became the undisputed queen of television talk shows. She’s also a billionaire.

19. Lucille Ball spent many years on the B-list and her agent told her to pursue a new career. Then she got her big break on I Love Lucy.

20. After his first film, Harrison Ford underwhelmed the producer and was told he would probably never succeed. But today Ford is the third highest-grossing actor of all time.

21. Vincent Van Gogh only sold one painting in his entire life, to a friend. He sometimes starved in order to create the 800 paintings he’d eventually do. Today, his works are priceless.

22. Dr. Seuss’ first book was rejected by 27 different publishers. He’s now the most popular children’s book author ever.

23. Henry Ford’s first auto company went out of business. He abandoned a second because of a fight and a third went downhill because of declining sales. He went on to become one of the greatest American entrepreneurs ever.

24. While developing his vacuum, Sir James Dyson went through 5,126 failed prototypes and his savings over 15 years. But the 5,127th prototype worked and now the Dyson brand is the best-selling vacuum cleaner in the United States.

25. J.K. Rowling was unemployed, divorced and raising a daughter on social security while writing the first Harry Potter novel. J.K. Rowling is now internationally renowned for her 7 book Harry Potter series and is the first person to become a billionaire from writing.

26. Stephen King was initially so frustrated with his first novel, Carrie that he threw it in the trash. King’s wife found the manuscript in the trash and took it out. To date his 49 novels have sold 350 million copies.

.

Source: MindTrip Magazine

.

 

Avoidance of Pain Keeps Many People Stuck.

.

.

Events can be manipulated to solve problems you are faced with. You can change things you’re not satisfied with.

While there’s no disputing the fact that you can’t always get what you want, it’s also true that you can exercise your innate power over the events of your life and make things go your way much more frequently.

To do so, you must understand and use the three mighty forces of power – desire, belief, and expectation. Before anything you want to happen can occur, you must desire that it happen. You must believe that it can happen. And you must expect it to happen. Let’s look at each of these three forces and then see how you can put them to work for you.

The First Power Force – Desire

Every manifestation of will is preceded by the desire to act. You must desire something before will can take action. In order to desire something, you must believe that you will gain a measure of satisfaction from it.

Anything you do, from the moment you wake up in the morning until the time you close your eyes to sleep in the evening, is precipitated by desire. Nothing is done that does not have a degree or more of desire behind it. To desire something is to feel there will be a measure of satisfaction after the getting of the thing. You cannot desire a thing unless you feel there will be some satisfaction in the attainment of that desire.

Avoidance of Pain Keeps Many People Stuck

Many people are stuck in a particular position in life simply because they feel that making a change would cause some measure of discomfort. To avoid the discomfort they linger in the existing state of affairs even though that causes discomfort as well. The sayings “Better the devil I know than the devil I don’t.” and “Don’t jump from the frying pan into the fire.” Express this sentiment.

Note the system of expectation at work here. When discomfort or pain is expected, the force works to keep you from making any change, even when the pain is imagined and may never take place.

Like all things, desire has degrees of strength. Consider the story of the disciple who went to his guru one day and asked, “Master, how do I achieve enlightenment?” The wise old guru directed the disciple to the bank of the Ganges River and had him kneel with his head over the water. Then the guru put his hand on the young man’s neck and pushed his head below the surface of the water. After a minute and a half the young disciple was frantic. He pulled and heaved and flailed his arms, but the grip was like iron. He could not get his head back out of the water. After two minutes, when it seemed as though his lungs would burst, the grip was released.

The young man’s head jerked out of the water and he took great gulps of air into his tortured lungs. The guru smiled. “Tell me,” he gently asked, ” what was your greatest desire just then?” “To breathe,” the young disciple stated emphatically. “Ah,” the guru said. “When you desire enlightenment to that degree, it shall be yours.”

To have a better understanding of desire, see it on an ascending scale, like a giant thermometer. At the bottom of the scale is zero, and at the top, one hundred.

When your desire is weak, near the bottom of the scale, it is unlikely that anything will motivate you to activate your will and accomplish the object of that desire. When your desire is near the top of the scale nothing can keep you from success in attaining that desire. To enhance desire, go to level and visualize the positive end result of what you desire to happen.

The Second Power Force – Belief

Belief is mental acceptance of some idea as being true. You accept ideas from others because they are authority figures. This setting of a belief in your mind (usually at a young and trusting age) comes about because you have absolute trust in the authority (generally the parent, sometimes the religious or educational institution, sometimes another trusted outside agency such as a relative, peer, or the media).

This acceptance can come about even when there are facts that contradict it. Reinforcement of beliefs strengthens until, faulty or true, they become a fundamental part of your thought processes. To entrench matters more, now beliefs are tested through the structure of the faulty belief, thereby compounding the problem. What this means is that you only accept information that reinforces the belief. Information that contradicts the belief is rejected.

The Third Force of Power – Expectation

Expectation is a mighty power indeed — so much so that a doctor can take an inert pill and tell a patient that it is a powerful drug, and the patient will react as though the actual drug had been taken. This well-documented phenomenon is called the placebo effect. It might also be called the “expectation effect.”

Of course, the placebo effect does not work all of the time. If it did, no one would bother with drugs at all. They would simply use placebos. It does, however, work with a significant and measurable percentage of success.

Expectation can be a powerful force in one’s life. How can you use expectation as a force in your life? Can you simply expect good things to happen and they will happen?

When you are told something by an authority figure you respect – say, a doctor, a teacher, a parent, or your boss – those words have an effect on all three levels, the physical, the mental, and the spiritual. When you believe this authority figure without hesitation or reservation, then that person’s expectation of you is more likely to come to be. With respect to your own expectation of yourself, however, you might well tell yourself, “I’m going to expect this to happen” only to hear a small voice responding, “Who are you kidding?”

The trick is to make yourself the respected authority figure. Expectation is enhanced with our techniques that entail going to one’s Alpha level and creating the visual imagery of the desired event already having taken place. This technique has a dual effect: it puts you in the position of acting as your own authority, and it reinforces your experience of yourself that way.

The more successful you become, the more you believe in yourself and the better you become at triggering the anticipated positive result of whatever event you are trying to bring about. As you grow into a better person better begets better and you do indeed grow better and better.

To build expectation, go to level and visualize the event as already having happened. When you come out of the alpha level, think about the event happening by a predetermined date. You will find more and more expected events coming to pass.

To help you change your expectation, recall the principle of correspondence – as above, so below; as below, so above. As it is with the seed, so it is with the tree. Start with the small if you want to affect the large. If you wish to bring about a change in a friend, in a parent, child, or spouse, change your own expectation. Begin to expect that which you desire to happen and you will note changes occurring.

Expect things on a smaller scale at first, as the smaller things come into being you begin to expect the major things to happen as well. Expectation is a force that can and should be discussed with others.

Expectation works with all people, and on all levels-on the family level, on the town, city, and country level, on the national, international, and universal level. The law is the law; what works with the small works with the mighty. What works with the molecule works with the universe.

Change your expectation and see your reality, your world, change to the degree that you wish it to change. And eventually you will arrive at the place you wish to be.

.

Burt Goldman is a life-long Silva instructor and creator of Quantum Jumping and the American Monk Healing Triangle.

.

 

Secret mental technique that enables you to step into someone else’s shoes.

.

.

Ever heard of the Raikov effect?

In a nutshell, it’s a secret mental technique that enables you to step into someone else’s shoes.

It’s easy to employ, but incredibly powerful.

And once you’ve “become” that other person, the skills you “borrow” remain with you.

The technique was discovered by Dr Vladimir Raikov in the early 1960s.

Since then, it’s been adapted by such well-known personalities as Win Wenger and Paul McKenna under the guise of Borrowed Genius and the Possibility Generator.

Now, for the first time ever, the technique is available in a brand new, easy-to-use package.

Using the latest technology, the Become Anybody technique gives you INSTANT ACCESS to the talents of your favorite genius… at the flick of a switch!

And all you have to do to make the technique work for you — is listen to the audio.

You’ll tune in to the characteristics of the person you want to emulate, whether it’s a celebrity, sports star, physicist, sculptor, artist, musician, mathematician, or anything else.

You’ll learn how to STEAL the qualities you admire the most… and add them to your own personality!

So if you’d like the business prowess of Richard Branson, the creativity of Da Vinci, the confidence of Brad Pitt, all you have to do is… SWITCH IT ON!

Remember, you can “become” ANYBODY you want to, at ANY TIME you want to.

The more often you use the program, the easier you’ll find it to “make the switch.”

The Become Anybody technique comes pre-loaded with a bunch of tailor-made applications covering sport, business, confidence and creativity, so you’ll NEVER run out of options.

.

Source: How to Become Anyone

 

How to Be More Interesting.

.

I’ve posted a lot of research from experts on getting people to like you, being influential and having great conversations.

What’s the best way to use all this information to be more interesting?

1) First, Don’t Be Boring

Sometimes the best offense is a good defense. Look at it like the Hippocratic Oath of conversations: Do no harm. We’re all terrible at realizing when we bore others because, well, we all think we’re just fascinating.

The #1 tip for never boring anyone comes from Scott Adams: Be brief, be positive. If you’re always to the point and stay upbeat, it’s extremely hard for anyone to accuse you of being poor company.

But sometimes you do need to speak a little longer to make sure things don’t get stilted. The Art of Civilized Conversation offers another good tip: Is anyone asking you questions about what you’re saying?

If not, maybe it’s time to end the story or ask the other person a question.

2) The Most Captivating People Are Often Good Listeners

Impressing people can be great but it can also devolve into status jockeying, one-upmanship and envy.

People love to talk about themselves and there are a dearth of good listeners. Let the other person talk. It gives their brain as much pleasure as food or money:

Talking about ourselves—whether in a personal conversation or through social media sites like Facebook and Twitter—triggers the same sensation of pleasure in the brain as food or money…

You can make an excellent impression by saying amazingly little. Ironically, the people we like the most often say the least.

3) Talk About The Other Person’s Interests

This is straight from Dale Carnegie and if you’re not that socially adept, this is as straightforward as it gets.

Why struggle to guess what most people might find generically interesting? Ask people what they’ve been up to or what their hobbies are. Then talk about that. You’re now 80% of the way there.

If you know about the subject the similarity will bond you. If you don’t, ask them to explain and be a great listener as they talk about something they love.

4) Have Three Good Stories

Comedians don’t just talk about anything when they’re onstage. They have their act rehearsed. You don’t just trot into a job interview and say whatever’s on your mind. Always have three good stories on hand that reliably entertain, inform or engage.

Another tip from Scott Adams: People are generally more interested in stories about people rather than things.

Drama, gossip and reality TV are successful for a reason. We all find human behavior fascinating. On the other hand, most people don’t want to hear about the features on your new iPhone.

5) Don’t Forget Charisma

It’s not all about the words. Some people are engaging but if what they said was transcribed, it would be unimpressive.

When you’re speaking emotionally, the words only account for 7% of what get conveyed. Seven percent. Voice tone and body language are far more important.

Via The Heart of Social Psychology: A Backstage View of a Passionate Science:

One often quoted study (Mehrabian & Ferris, 1967) found that of all the information conveyed to another person when we say something that is emotional (not informational), only 7 percent is contained in the actual meaning of the words we use.

Laugh. Smile. Be passionate. Gesture. Modulate your voice. Don’t just sweat the words.

6) Be Somewhere Interesting

Got a say in where you’ll be at, as with a date or meeting? Pick someplace stimulating. Context matters.

In general, we’re lousy about realizing where our feelings are coming from.

Research shows excitement from any source is often associated with the person you’re with — even if they’re not the cause of it.

Why do people find musicians so captivating? The music and the crowd stimulates emotions — and we viscerally associate those with the band.

MIT Behavioral Economist Dan Ariely recounts a relevant study he did:

Why does this happen? Ariely thinks it might have something to do with “misattribution of emotions”: “Sometimes we have an emotion and we don’t know where it’s coming from, so we kind of stick it on something that seems sensible.” In other words, your strong feelings about the music might make you think you’re having strong feelings about the lead singer.

7) And Most Importantly: Live An Interesting Life

Remember the theme of Don Quixote: If you want to be a knight, act like a knight.

If you don’t read, watch and think about generic things, generic things are less likely to come out of your mouth. This doesn’t need to be expensive or difficult. Hang out more often with the most interesting people you know. The friends you spend time with dramatically affect your behavior — whether you like it or not.

The Longevity Project, which studied over 1000 people from youth to death had this to say: The groups you associate with often determine the type of person you become.

In The Start-up of You, Reid Hoffman and Ben Casnocha talk about how the best way to improve particular qualities in yourself is to spend time with people who are already like that.

The best and most reliable way to appear interesting is to live an interesting life. And to pursue that ends up being far more rewarding than merely making a good impression on others.

.

By Eric Barker / Source: Time Magazine

.