Worrier or Warrior 1…..

by Sunil Bali, Chief Energy Officer, 04-12-11

Research reveals that many successful people have an interesting strategy when it comes to dealing with rejection. Rather than worry about being rejected, they adopt a warrior like mentality and wear their scars of battle proudly.

They treat their rejections like badges of honour, to remind them of what they’ve been through and to keep persisting.

Author of 49 novels, Stephen King used this strategy when he first started writing. As a child, King was repeatedly rejected by publishers, but instead of throwing the rejection slips away, he hammered a nail into the wall above his bed and put all his rejections slips on it.

King said, "By the time I was fourteen, the nail in the wall would no longer support the weight of the rejection slips impaled on it. So I replaced the nail with a spike and went on writing." To date, Stephen King has sold over 350 million books.

Most writers can tell you how many rejections they’ve had. Marketing guru and author of 15 best sellers Seth Godin says, "I had 950 rejection letters before I sold my first book."

The crime writer Ed McBain (aka Evan Hunter) sold over 100 million books before he died, but he too was no overnight sensation. McBain received enough rejections to paper the walls of his bathroom so that he could then laugh at all the people who said that his writing was crap!

When the inevitable happens and one of your labours of love is rejected, what’s it to be: worrier or warrior?

Quotes

Throw your heart over the fence and the rest will follow – Norman Vincent Peale

Courage is the price life exacts for granting peace – Amelia Earhart

Happiness is not in the mere possession of money; it lies in the joy of achievement, in the thrill of creative effort – Franklin D. Roosevelt

Art is the proper task of life – Friedrich Nietzsche

Humour

These photographs are more aaahh than ha ha, but are so wonderful that I wanted to share them with you…..a mother’s brilliant imagination: