Use Fierce Determination To Overcome Anything In The Way Of Your Success

So what exactly is determination?

Merriam-Webster defines determination as a quality that makes you continue trying to do or achieve something difficult.

If you’ve achieved anything notable in life, you probably dealt with and overcame some challenges along the way. So you know what’s it’s like to show determination to get the positive result you want or need.

Inspirational Examples of Determination

In case you need a refresher on how valuable determination can be, take a look at the following 15 famous people who used incredible determination during their lives in various endeavors. Their stories are inspirational.

Henry Ford

Henry Ford was the pioneer industrialist who established Ford Motors and invented the revolutionary assembly line method. Before he succeeded, he tried out different types of businesses, but they all failed miserably, with him going bankrupt five times.

Albert Einstein

Albert Einstein was the genius scientist who discovered, among other things, the theory of relativity. His eventual success as a scientist probably surprised many people who knew him as a child because he didn’t talk until he was four years and didn’t read until he was 7. Moreover, his teachers believed him to be mentally handicapped, and for that reason, the school expelled him. When he applied for entry to the Zurich Polytechnic Institute, the school rejected him).

Walt Disney

Walt Disney was the creator of Mickey Mouse, Disneyland, and a whole universe of fun based on his famous characters. But his fantastic success didn’t come easily. His first employer, the Kansas City Star, fired him because they believed his cartoons weren’t creative enough.,

Vincent Van Gogh

Vincent Van Gogh was a brilliant painter whose works are worth millions of dollars each today. However, while he was alive, hardly anyone appreciated his work, and some say that the only painting he sold was to a close friend of his. He was penniless and suffered from paranoid schizophrenia during most of the latter part of his life.

Steven Spielberg

Steven Spielberg is the iconic director and producer responsible for many famous Hollywood movie hits. But his great success only came after he suffered setbacks early in his nascent film career. He applied to the Southern California School of Theater, Film, and Television three times, and the school rejected him all three times).

Bill Gates

Bill Gates is the billionaire co-founder of Microsoft. But as a young man, his first product was a colossal failure that had multiple malfunctions.

Bethany Hamilton

Bethany Hamilton is a champion surfer. To achieve that success, she had to overcome tremendous physical adversity. When she was 13, a shark chewed off her left arm, but she survived.

Benjamin Franklin

Benjamin Franklin was an American statesman who helped found the United States, as well as a prolific inventor responsible for creating bifocals and the lightning rod. He achieved those amazing feats despite lack of formal education, which stopped when he was ten years old because his parents couldn’t afford to educate him further.

Richard Branson

Richard Branson is a billionaire entrepreneur who founded Virgin Atlantic Airlines, as well as a recording studio and a magazine. However, it was never easy for him. Because of dyslexia, Richard did poorly in the classroom and failed most of his exams. Thus, he was labeled a troublemaker in school.

Stephen King

Stephen King is a world-famous author who has sold millions of mystery and thriller novels around the world — many of which became movies and TV shows. But his road to fame as an author included some great disappointment. In the beginning, his first novel ‘Carrie’ was rejected 30 times by publishers.

Elvis Presley

Elvis Presley was an iconic singer who became the “kind of rock and roll”. But in 1954, when he was starting out, he received a bad reception from the Grand Ole Opry audience, at which point the manager kicked him out unceremoniously and told him he should go back to driving trucks to make his living.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt

Franklin Delano Roosevelt was America’s 32nd president and he led his country through the Great Depression and World War II. These feats are even more remarkable when you consider that Roosevelt became partially paralyzed at age 39 after contracting polio. Eventually, he wound up paralyzed from the waist down and used a wheelchair.

Jim Carrey

Jim Carrey is a famous comedian and actor. But his fame came after he grew up in a poor, struggling family. When he was 15, he dropped out of school to work to help support his family, who all lived in a van.

J.K. Rowling

J.K. Rowling is the world-famous author of the Harry Potter books and creator of the Hogwarts Universe. However, her first manuscript of ‘Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone’ was rejected 12 times before a publisher finally accepted it.

Oprah Winfrey

Oprah Winfrey is a celebrity talk show personality whose media empire is now worth nearly $3 billion, which makes her the richest woman in the world. But she wasn’t born with a silver spoon in her mouth. Her family was so impoverished, she wore sacks as clothing. Because of abuse from some members of her family, she left home at 14 and then had a baby who died after birth.

So as you can see from the inspirational examples of determination described above, success often doesn’t come easily. But if you are determined enough, you can overcome whatever obstacles and adversity stand in your way and be successful at whatever you’re trying to accomplish.

Stay fiercely determined, and you will prevail in the end.

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Thanks for reading. Copyright Terry Mansfield. All rights reserved.