"You ain't going nowhere, son. You ought to go back to drivin' a
truck." What if Elvis believed this Grand Ole Opry manager's critique after
his l954 performance? Or the Beatles listened in 1962 when Decca Recording
Company responded, "We don't like their sound. Groups of guitars are on the
way out."
What if Rudyard Kipling quit writing when the San Francisco Examiner told
him, "I'm sorry, but you just don't know how to use the English language."
Or as a struggling artist, Walt Disney took seriously the words of a
prospective employer to "try another line of work" because he "didn't have
any creative, original ideas."
What if ten year old Albert Einstein believed his teacher's words, "you
will never amount to much." Or opera star, Enrico Caruso, gave up singing
after his first vocal teacher counseled, "your voice sounds like wind
whistling through a window."
Thankfully, they didn't believe what they were told. But many of us do. We
accept someone else's opinion as our fact. We allow others to determine
what we believe about ourselves, what we aspire to achieve, what we dream
and what we become. Others people's limiting beliefs about us become our
own as we give them power over our life.
But, Jack Canfield and Mark Victor Hansen didn't. Their "Chicken Soup for
the Soul" series, now with 65 titles, has sold more than 80 million copies
in 27 languages. Not bad for an anthology rejected by 33 major publishing
houses in the first month, receiving more than 140 total rejections before
their agent gave it back to them saying "I can't sell this book." Only by
going booth to booth and pitching their vision to editors at a booksellers'
convention did they finally find a small publisher who said yes.
Their passion about their work and its message kept them going. Passion
kept Disney and Einstein and Kipling going, too. That's because passion is
the most powerful self-motivator any of us can have. It's what drives us to
use our talents and abilities. It's the one criteria I've found most
helpful when selecting people in my twenty years of management. You can
teach most skills. But you can't teach passion.
People who are winning at working believe in themselves and their dreams.
They're not likely to view setbacks as failures, roadblocks as dead-ends,
or negative critique as fatal. It's their passion that keeps them going
when others give up. It's their passion that provides strength of purpose,
resilience, persistence and the confidence to keep trying. It's their
passion that helps them differentiate between opinion and fact about who
they are and what they can do with their life. It's their passion that
guides them.
Like Babe Ruth said, "It's hard to beat a person who never gives up." When
you are passionate about your work, your dreams and your life, you don't
give up.
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