Let’s talk about disappointment. Not the kind you experience when you’re late to the movie theater and find you’re going to be stuck in the very front row feeling like an open PEZ dispenser.
The other kind.
The kind of disappointment that is so crushing that it forces you to reevaluate everything you think you know about your life. The kind of disappointment that makes you want to quit.
Einstein was disappointed after realizing his first few proofs of E=MC2 were garbage.
Sara Blakely, the billionaire founder of Spanx, was once an aspiring law student until she failed the LSAT.
Michael Jordan was so devastated when he didn’t make the cut for his high school varsity team that he shut himself in his room and cried.
Edison must have experienced terrible disappointment multiple times while he was failing his way through 1,000+ filament materials for his new electric light.
In 2011, Venus Williams was knocked out of competition and down to 105th in the world after a bout with Sjogren’s Syndrome.
The list is endless. All of the people above could have ended their stories by quitting after their first bruising bout with disappointment.
But they didn’t. They used the bitter taste of it to drive them through one failure after another until they succeeded.
Disappointed? Good. Now get back up and get moving. Your story isn’t over yet.