Sometimes, you jump out of the gate with a great idea that you can polish and run with. Everything’s going well—until you get hit with a failure. Failure punches you in the gut, leaving you with throbbing wounds and the inability to do anything but moan about what might have been.

    But take heart—failure isn’t the end, unless you let it be. Failure means you’re on the road so many others have taken to success. Don’t believe me? Here are 10 people who lived through failure before going on to become names known around the world:

    有时候，你想到一个好主意，于是你兴冲冲地出发，精心打磨，打算用它开创一份事业。一切都顺风顺水——直到你遭遇失败。失败让你遭到重创，给你留下隐隐作痛的伤口，让你哀叹本来有望创下的成就，再难有所作为。

    但你要振作起来——失败并非终点，除非你已向命运屈服。失败意味着你正走在其他成功者曾走过的道路上。不相信？那就一起来回顾一下以下这10位名人在成功之前经历过的失败：

    1

    Milton Hershey

    The man who blessed us with the sweet milk-chocolate treat we all love wasn’t a hit the first time around. Before launching his own candy business, he had worked for a local candy factory. But when he decided to go out on his own, he failed miserably.

    Despite two more failures, he returned to the family farm and perfected the art of making delicious milk-chocolate candy, which we enjoy in the form of Hershey chocolate today.

    1

    弥尔顿•好时

    他创造的牛奶巧克力糖果，深受所有人喜爱，但他并非从最开始便一帆风顺。在创建自己的糖果公司之前，他曾在当地一家糖果工厂工作。决定自己创业时，他却遭遇惨败。

    又经历过两次失败之后，他回到了家族的农场，进一步完善制作美味牛奶巧克力糖果的技艺，这才有了今天我们喜欢的好时巧克力。

    2

    Theodor Giesel

    Photograph by Gene Lester — Getty Images

    This author struggled to write a novel that publishing companies would call something other than “pure rubbish” several times—27 to be exact. The man just wouldn’t quit, though.

    One fateful night, he ran into an old friend who had recently taken over as a children’s literature editor. The friend agreed to publish Giesel’s work. Better known today as Dr. Seuss, Giesel was never again called a failure after his first book struck it big.

    2

    西奥多•吉塞尔

    这位作家努力写出的一部小说，却被出版公司多次拒绝，甚至被评价为“完全是垃圾”——他一共被拒绝了27次。然而他并没有放弃。

    在一个决定命运的夜晚，他遇到了一位老朋友，这位朋友最近刚刚成为一名儿童文学编辑。于是，朋友同意出版吉塞尔的书。如今，他的笔名“苏斯博士”已经家喻户晓。在第一本书热卖之后，再也没有人说吉塞尔是失败者。

    3

    Albert Einstein

    Despite being known as a true genius in the present day, this intellectual didn’t have a great start (to say he was running behind is an understatement). As a kid, he didn’t begin to speak a word until he was 4 years old. A few years later, his elementary school teachers considered him lazy because he would ask abstract questions that made no sense to others.

    He kept on anyway, eventually formulating the theory of relativity—something most of us still can’t understand today.

    3

    艾尔伯特•爱因斯坦

    虽然今天我们都知道爱因斯坦是真正的天才，但这位天才一开始表现得并不怎么样（实际上，他一开始还落后于别人）。小时候，他直到四岁才开始说话。几年后，他的小学老师认为他太懒惰，因为他会问一些在其他人看来毫无意义的抽象问题。

    但他一直坚持，最终发现了直到现在我们大多数人依旧不能理解的相对论。

    4

    Benjamin Franklin

    A founding father, the inventor of bifocals and the lightning rod and elementary-school dropout—it sounds crazy, but this is an accurate description of Franklin.

    His family couldn’t afford to finance his education after his 10th birthday, but that didn’t stop him. He read books like crazy and took every opportunity he could to learn. Ironically, Franklin is now found in the history books that 10-year-old kids around the world read every day.

    4

    本杰明•富兰克林

    富兰克林是美国的国父，远近双对焦眼镜和避雷针的发明者，小学辍学生——虽然听起来有些不可思议，但这正是富兰克林的准确生平介绍。

    在他10岁之后，家人便无力供他上学，但他的求知欲并没有因此而消失。他努力读书，抓住每一个机会学习。讽刺的是，现在，富兰克林的故事，却出现在全世界所有10岁左右的孩子们的历史读物中。

    5

    Stephen King

    King is a best-selling writer (currently 350 million books sold and climbing) whose work has been made into several motion pictures. However, his first work was rejected 30 times, which lead to King throwing it in the trash. Thankfully, his wife made him keep working at it, and—from that inauspicious start—Carrie was born.

    5

    斯蒂芬•金

    斯蒂芬•金是一名畅销书作家（他的作品销量目前达到3.5亿本，而且仍在增加），他的作品已经被翻拍成多部电影。但他的第一部作品却被拒绝了30次，以至于金把它扔到了垃圾桶里。幸运的是，他的妻子却鼓励他继续写作——在经历过最初的不顺之后，《魔女嘉莉》诞生了。

    6

    Oprah Winfrey

    To many, losing a child is worse than losing a business. Oprah lived through this hellish reality after giving birth at 14. She managed to not only overcome this, but also being repeatedly molested by her cousin, uncle and a family friend. Despite her tragic past, she has worked hard to become a success and amass a net worth of $2.9 billion.

    6

    奥普拉•温弗里

    对于许多人来说，失去一个孩子比事业失败更加糟糕。奥普拉在14岁时生下的孩子夭折，这段地狱般的经历一直折磨着她。她不仅要克服丧子之痛，还要面对堂兄、叔叔和一个亲友的反复骚扰。尽管过去的经历如此悲惨，但她最终凭借自身的努力取得了成功，积累了29亿美元的身家。

    7

    Thomas Edison

    Edison may just hold the record for most failed attempts before reaching success on a single project, having failed several thousand times before inventing a functional light bulb. His response has become famous to entrepreneurs: “I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.”

    7

    托马斯•爱迪生

    爱迪生可能是在一个项目成功之前经历过最多次失败的人，他在发明灯泡之前失败了成千上万次。他对此的回复已成为创业金句：“我没有失败。我已经发现了1万种行不通的方法。”

    8

    Michael Jordan

    As a kid, Jordan loved basketball and knew he wanted to make a career out of it, though no coach would give him a chance because he was short. After using an inside connection to get into a basketball camp from which players for college teams were chosen, Jordan got noticed by a coach—who still chose not to invite him to the team.

    Jordan returned home discouraged, but decided to prove the coach wrong. Now a member of the NBA Hall of Fame, just about everyone would agree he succeeded.

    8

    迈克尔•乔丹

    小时候的乔丹喜欢篮球，一直梦想着能以此为职业，但因为他个子矮小，没有一位教练愿意给他机会。在通过熟人进入篮球训练营之后，乔丹引起了一位教练的关注，当时大学球队会从训练营中挑选球员，但这位教练也没有邀请乔丹加入自己的球队。

    乔丹失望地回到家中，但他决定证明教练是错误的。现在，乔丹已经贵为NBA名人堂的一员，恐怕没有人会对飞人的成就有所质疑。

    9

    Walt Disney

    Disney began his career by being fired by a newspaper fornot being creative enough. Later, his Mickey Mouse cartoons were rejected because they were deemed to be “too scary for women.” If that wasn’t enough, "The Three Little Pigs" was also turned down because it only had four characters.

    Thankfully, we have the Disney company today because Walt chose not to listen to any of his critics and press forward towards his dreams.

    9

    沃尔特•迪士尼

    迪士尼的第一份工作是在一家报社，但这家报社认为他创意不足，将他辞退。后来，他的米老鼠动画也遭到了拒绝，因为人们认为这些动画“太恐怖不适合女性观看”。不仅如此，他的《三头小猪》也遭到了拒绝，原因是里面只有四个角色。

    幸运的是，正是因为沃尔特选择不理睬这些批评意见，继续努力追梦，我们才有了今天的迪士尼公司。

    10

    Kris Carr

    We all get hit by unforeseen obstacles. For Carr, it was a rare cancer. Carr fought her disease head on with a new nutritional lifestyle, developing a career as a successful author and health coach in the process. Despite facing challenging circumstances from the start, she is now looked to as one the most knowledgeable experts on healthy living online today.

    Ultimately, you’re no different than the people in the list above. We will all fail at one point or another. The important thing is to learn how to overcome failure and to keep pushing forward towards your dreams.

    10

    克里斯•卡尔

    我们总会遇到意想不到的障碍。卡尔遭遇到的是一种罕见的癌症。她决定与病魔作斗争，选择了一种新的注重营养均衡的生活方式，由此成为一名成功的作家，并正在努力成为一名健康教练。虽然在最开始面临极具挑战性的环境，但她现在却已经成为互联网上知识最渊博的健康生活专家之一。

    归根结底，你与上面所列的这些名人没有什么区别。我们都会遭遇失败。重要的是学会如何克服失败，继续为实现自己的梦想而努力。（财富中文网）

    译者：刘进龙/汪皓

    审校：任文科