When you’ve tried just about everything and have decided to finally give up, consider this.

Edison tried 10,000 times (unsuccessfully) before he invented the light bulb.

Walt Disney was fired from a newspaper because he didn’t have any ideas.

Colonel Sanders tried to sell his chicken recipe to over 1,000 places before someone bit – seven years later he sold his fried chicken company for millions.

The first “Chicken Soup For Your Soul” was rejected by 33 publishers.

General Douglas MacArthur was turned down for admission to West Point not once but twice, but he kept on trying and was accepted the third time before his eventual march to military glory.

Henry Ford failed and went broke 5 times before he succeeded in making the Model T.

FedEx Founder Fred Smith got a C on a college paper outlining his idea for the successful delivery service.

And what was our excuse again for giving up?

Here are 50 more people who will inspire you to never, ever give up.

“I’ve failed over and over again in my life.  That’s is why I succeed” – Michael Jordan, cut from his high school basketball team.

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Perhaps nothing is more devastating than when we are disappointed by those closest to us – our friends, family, or colleagues.

All our lives we always wanted to believe these people would be there for us – stand up and speak up for us and yet when push comes to shove, most do not.

This can be the final blow in a relationship and it can launch a lot of understandable but needless negative self-talk in our minds.

The rule of thumb usually is when you’re riding high and happy, everyone around you is there for you.  In fact, some of them may be there because of you.

But when adversity strikes, people often choose to save their jobs, reputations and relationships even as we may they should also stand for us.

I have found this to be a most effective way in dealing with the feeling of betrayal from others.

A study was done recently about who tends to be saved when a ship sinks.  The study focused on numerous ship sinkings where 100 or more lives were at stake.

The findings are dramatic.

The captain gets off the ship last, right?  And the children get off first?

That would be wrong.

According to the findings, the crew gets off first (they know how), then the men, then the women and yes, the children are last.

The human condition is for one under duress to save their own skin first.

When I think of this graphic example, although I don’t like it, it makes me realize that when someone stands for us, be grateful.

When others disappoint, remember the Titanic.

                  “A good friend will always stab you in the front” – Oscar Wilde

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It’s hard to let go.

Maybe that’s why the world is filled with control freaks.  Maybe we are even a bit of a control freak from time to time.

But if you’ve ever noticed, control freaks are some of the unhappiest people in the world.  They can’t help themselves.  They just have to get their way to be happy.

Unfortunately, it makes them unhappy and it drives others away.  Think about it: the price of a relationship shouldn’t always be giving in to someone else.

The irony is that we gain control by giving up control.

So for one day, try this challenge:  see yourself as an enabler of others.  Actually try to let them have their way as much as possible without compromising your morals or ethics.

People I know who are able to let go and free themselves of the stresses and irritations of life, are active enablers of others.

We must stand by our principles but we can also enable others to stand by theirs.

“Diplomacy is the art of letting someone else have your way” — Daniele Vare

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Why do we let others make us feel badly about ourselves?

And why do we forget good things almost as fast as we hear them?

This is backwards.

No one can make us think negatively about ourselves unless we allow.

And conversely, the most important weapon we have – that is rarely used – to combat the negatives comments, statements or attitudes we receive from others is remembering the good ones, erasing the bad ones immediately.

This is not to say we can’t work on being better – that’s actually life’s mission. More importantly, take control of the self-talk we allow in our heads.

Negative self-talk from others usually gets re-run by us – over and over again.

Pledge today to put a stop/loss on negative talk from everyone and let’s give ourselves a chance to be happy and successful.

“No one can make you feel inferior without your consent” – Eleanor Roosevelt

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When we get hit with a problem, it seems like it’s always more than one at a time to add to our already growing list.

That causes stress that can actually force us to make bad decisions and prolong the grief.

But there is a better way:

1. Don’t try to solve a new problem on the spot, manage it.  Put it on a priority list with everything else. 
2. Resist the urge to solve the next problem that comes along.
3. Know the there are three kinds of problems and we would do well to know them inside and out:  the kind that can be solved, the kind that can’t be solved and the ones that for some reason or the other resolve themselves.
4. Put emotion in its place.  Getting emotional usually makes a problem more important than it may actually be.  Resist that temptation.
5. My favorite:  every time you chip away at an existing problem, try to see it as making a small payment one installment at a time as opposed to one giant move to make it go away.

“Troubles are often the tools by which God fashions us for better things” — Henry Ward Beecher

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One of the two teams that play in the Super Bowl has to lose.

At least one person loses each election, beauty contest or for that matter competing for future employment.

Disappointment needs to be owned – not ignored – because disappointment remains one of the most useful tools if we know how to use it.

May I share how I deal with it:

1. First night, sleep it off.  Don’t ruminate or over evaluate.  Rest first above all.
2. Be human, allow a chance to feel the disappointment but not for one moment allow that disappointment to be expressed as failure.
3. Then, focus on the great exhilaration that we are going to feel when we turn the disappointment into success.
4. Start gathering examples of disappointments that have been worth wading through – a second marriage, the better job you got when your dream job got away, the new friend that came into your life when a trusted friend hurt you.

Life is tough.

No one – not through power or money – can avoid disappointment.

It can be a great gift and very transformational.

The secret to rebounding from great disappointment is to eventually evolve into the positive person it can make us when we feel it, own it and come up with a plan to change it.

“We must accept finite disappointment, but never lose infinite hope”  — Martin Luther King, Jr.

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My friend and well-known Philadelphia dj Michael Tearson shared both a heart breaking and heart warming story with me about the death of his wife, the love of his life – a person for whom he has found no replacement in the 18 years since she died.

They met, fell in love and married only to find out months later that his new bride, the former Lynne Pedersen discovered that she had advanced breast cancer.  Michael and Lynne lived like there was no tomorrow because there was no tomorrow.

She fought the good fight with her husband by her side but she didn’t lose her battle.  Yes, she lost her life but the two of them had what many people take for granted – a virtual moment in time when two people connect with each other in love and mutual appreciation.

In our world, we are often blessed with the long-term companionship of others.  I think if we thought about the uncertainty of time, we would conclude, as Michael Tearson has, that any time with the right person is better than lots of time with the wrong one.

It doesn’t take a fatal disease to make us appreciate the warmth, friendship and support of others, just the awareness to do so.

Michael Tearson and Lynne Pedersen is a love story – short in years, long on valuing the gift of time.

My thanks to Michael Tearson for allowing me to tell this personal story.

“You get what anyone gets. You get a lifetime” – Neil Gaiman’s character of death in the Sandman Comic Book

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When we’ve been hurt, it is understandable that it may take some time to put that hurt behind us.

Some people eventually do.

Some don’t.

The ones who don’t turn into the same person who hurt them in the first place when they hang on to the vitriol of being the victim as justified as it may be.

To be sure, we forgive others for our own sake not for the others.

The animosity of a divorce or child custody battle, an insult, a betrayal, a hurtful deed or lie – these things can make us crazy.

Forgiveness for one’s own sake is a freeing thing.

But forgiving does not necessarily mean forgetting.  Two benefits of not forgetting are to remember that this person hurt us in some way and the other is to keep in mind what the deed was so we can remain on the lookout for it in others.

Minnesota Wild hockey player Dany Heatley was deemed responsible for a car accident that killed his friend and then former Atlanta Thrasher’s teammate Dan Snyder in 2003.

But Snyder’s family was very supportive of their son’s friend and told prosecutors and the judge that nothing could be gained by putting Heatly in prison.  The judge listened to the family.

If the family of a son with so much promise who was killed in an irresponsible act of driving recklessly can forgive the driver, what’s our problem?

“We are all human beings and we know that humans make mistakes.  We do not lay the blame on Dany Heatley for the accident that took our son from us.  Forgiveness is also a part of being human and we know that there is nothing to gain from harboring resentment and anger toward others” – Graham Snyder

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I once saw a radio news director of a Philadelphia radio station get fired and after laying out the company’s case before he was actually fired his boss asked him one question – “Can you tell me why you shouldn’t be dismissed?”

Remarkably, his answer was “No”.

In the converse, I have often thought if we were asked, “Why should you get a raise” that most of the responses would be about longevity, loyalty and time spent working for the company.

What employers want to hear – in any economy – is that our value exceeds what they are paying us.

So an excellent way to set up the pay raise meeting is to ask ourselves to name 5 ways we can be more valuable than we are today.  List them.  Work them.  Achieve them.

Employees know even better than their superiors what it takes to be more valuable than what they are paid.

When that meeting occurs, mention the newly acquired skills and a brief example of each one of them.

Some companies plainly will not offer raises and if that turns out to be true of where you work, you can then list these 5 newly acquired valuable skills with the other advantages of employing you and take them elsewhere.

For 11 more ways to get a raise, click here.

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I love the wisdom of Dale Carnegie who said it best when he wrote, “If you are wrong, admit it quickly and emphatically”.

For some reason human beings always want to be right but no one hits 1.000 in that department.

Admitting mistakes has even more value today than ever before because the emerging Millennial generation of which there are 80 million people coming of age puts a high value on authenticity.

The unbelievable hype of the Mad Men generation is no longer believed.

We want to know people who are real and who admit that they aren’t perfect.  In fact, the imperfections make our advantages look even more impressive.

So the worst thing we can do is to live like it’s 1999. 

Try for perfection.

Accept our best efforts.

And when we’re wrong, don’t waste an opportunity to be real and authentic.

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