Have you been rejected or failed 27 times? You could be the next Jack Ma!

“Sweet are the uses of adversity;
Which, like the toad, ugly and venomous,
Wears yet a precious jewel in his head;”

As William Shakespeare, the greatest playwright ever quotes- the sweetest victories are the ones that had brought bitterest failures with them. The world has witnessed thousands of great men and women, who had won over their failures to win!

Jack Ma, a Chinese businessman, is the greatest story of rags to riches. The founder of Alibaba Group has faced failures multiple times, yet remained un-deterred to give up! He is a man of inspiration for all, savouring millions to win through their dark hours.

Having failed enumerable times at school, Ma didn’t give up; instead he chose to remain optimistic towards life goals for he knew that there is always a sunshine after a dreadful night! He quotes, "I failed a key primary school test two times, I failed the middle school test three times, I failed the college entrance exam two times…”

Ma isn’t the only one who wasn’t able to perform well at school or was a dropout from college. History is evident that mere school knowledge or a provisional degree have never brought forward the best to the world. Albert Einstein never went to school! Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg dropped out from college even before they could collect their degrees. And who does not know these legends!?

“Persistence Pays!” Ma proves to be a point-blank example to the saying. He had been rejected 10 times from The Harvard University, yet he did not give up. It has been a sheer show of determination and persistence that gave him the courage to apply that many times!

Thomas Edison, the inventor of the light bulb, failed 1000 times before he came up with the final product. Having asked about his failures, he said, “I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work.”

To all those struggling with getting a job, Ma, yet again sets an uncanny example to not lose hope and to not give up! He was rejected by 30 companies, where he had applied for a job, post his graduation. He was even turned down for the post of a police officer, stating- “He wasn’t good enough.”

Jack Canfield, the author of The Chicken Soup series was rejected 144 times before he found a publisher for his book. He did not give up on his hunt for the publisher. When he found one, he said he wanted to sell 1.5 million copies in first 18 months.

The publisher mocked, saying he wouldn’t even make up 20000. When the first book hit the stores, 8 million copies were sold in America and 10 million across the world. Canfield says, “So the reality is that you just have to say, ‘I’m more committed to my vision than I’m committed to your doubt or my fear,’ and just go for it…”

Rejections never mean an end. There is always a road to success, if not the one you’ve chosen to walk on, but there surely is one. There will always be people around understating our worth, but this does not prove that you are not worth anything! “Hope is a good thing, maybe best of things. And no good thing ever dies.”

Like Edison, Jack Ma too regards his work Alibaba as ‘1001 mistakes’ all of which have helped and taught him the most valuable lessons of life. “The lessons I learned from the dark days at Alibaba are that you've got to make your team have value, innovation, and vision.”

“If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!”

Jack Ma, along with a thousand-other people akin, is a classic example of how he has brought life to these lines of Rudyard Kipling. Treating, both success and failure as the two side of same coin, staying unaffected deeply by either and continuing to strive further in the run is all that it takes to become successful.

“If you don’t give up, you still have a chance. Giving up is the greatest failure.” As he quotes, Jack Ma continues to be the greatest living inspiration for many, a classic show of how perseverance matters!

Standing with your head upright, even when life throws down crippling failures and learning through them is all that matters. As cliché it may sound, it continues to be an undisputable truth- “Failures are the stepping stones to success!”