Real Stories Proving You Should NEVER Give Up

July 26, 2022
•11 min read
The difference between success and failure is choosing not to give up. Here are stories that can teach us about the road to success.
Achieving your dreams can be an incredibly difficult feat. But the difference between success and failure is choosing not to give up. Let's see what stories of successful people can teach us about the road to success.
10. Well, well, well…
In 2016, a small village in India was afflicted with a severe drought. The local wells had dried out, and things were getting pretty dire. After the wife of Bapurao Tajne, a poor laborer from the village, was denied water by the owner of the only nearby well that still had some, Tajne vowed that his family would never have to ask anyone for water again.


9. Ali Ma Ma
Jack Ma is a little more well-known than Bapurao Tajne. Since founding e-commerce giant Alibaba in 1999, Ma has become a giant in the tech and trade industries. With an estimated net worth of 36.2 billion dollars, Ma has created an empire of epic proportions, due to his strong vision and understanding of the internet’s business potential.
8. Jim Carrey
Watching his famously elastic face contort into one of his many iconic characters, you might not think that there was a troubled past behind Jim Carrey’s wild eyes.
In recent years, Jim has been more open about the troubles in his life, and has noticeably changed his approach to performance following this. At his height, however, Carrey never snapped out of his crazily-energetic public persona, and it would have been easy to assume that it was a product of a happy and carefree life. The truth will make you re-think your understanding of Jim Carrey.You see, Jim’s childhood was tough; after his father lost his job, the family fell on hard times, and Jim had to work long shifts in a factory, aged 10, just to make ends meet.
7. Chris Hill-Scott
Sometimes, people do give up. But the story of Chris Hill-Scott is enough to turn anyone away from the idea of giving up on a good opportunity. Chris was one of the co-founders of a company called SwiftKey, a pioneer of the predictive text and autocorrect algorithms that seems to rescue and infuriate us daily.
Chris made the difficult decision that the long, unrewarding hours necessary in developing a small company were not worth the stress. He left SwiftKey in hopes of something better.6. Stephen King
Another famous instance of soul-crushing struggle on the way to greatness is Stephen King’s slow rise to fame. Though his famous life has not been easy, tainted with bouts of drug and alcohol addiction, some of the greatest difficulties of King’s life came on the road to fame.
King’s childhood was tough: when he was an infant, his father abandoned his family, leaving his mother to raise her children alone, and as a child, King saw one of his friends get killed by a train. For years in his adult life, King worked tirelessly to make a living as a writer, all while he and his wife lived in a trailer, working multiple jobs to make ends meet. Eventually, he sold his first novel, Carrie, in 1973, which would be adapted into a hugely successful movie two years later. King’s perseverance allowed him eventual success, in spite of a tough and unfortunate life. He went on to scare the whole world with spooky characters such as Pennywise the clown.5. Ronald Wayne
Quite possibly the worst example of quitting too soon, Ronald Wayne’s story will have you facepalming so hard, you’ll fall off your seat. In 1976, Wayne helped to establish a computer hardware company in California.
While initially optimistic about the venture, Wayne quickly grew concerned about the potential financial losses he foresaw the company headed into, and within a mere twelve days, sold off his 10% share for $800 and left the company.4. J.K. Rowling
For someone responsible for the bestselling book series of all time, which has since developed into an absolute mammoth money machine, spanning video games, theme parks and – of course – multiple movie franchises, it seems crazy that J.K Rowling refers to herself, circa 1995, as a ‘failure’.
But the road to wealth and recognition was incredibly difficult for Rowling. After her mother’s death during the writing of the first Harry Potter book, Rowling fell into a deep depression; something she would struggle with repeatedly. Matters were only made worse following a difficult divorce, leaving Rowling to raise her daughter alone. Throughout the tough times, unable to find work and surviving off unemployment benefits, Rowling found relief in her writing. She worked extremely hard, pushing herself forward as best she could, even going as far as manually typing out each copy of her 90,000 word debut novel, The Philosopher’s Stone, as she could not afford a computer or printer.3. Walt Disney
A controversial figure in his own right, Walt Disney is another great example of a person facing hardships but persevering and – in this case – building an empire.
When Walt decided he was going to be an artist at age 17, he was met with fierce discouragement from his family, who wanted him to join the family business. But a life in the jelly industry was not what Walt had in mind. Walt worked, at various points in his early adult life, in an advertising company and a newspaper. He was fired from the newspaper, with his boss telling him he ‘lacked imagination and had no good ideas’. Not to be easily discouraged, Walt opened his own animation business, Laugh-O-Gram studios, but this quickly fell into bankruptcy. With the odds stacked firmly against him, and in the face of painful setbacks, he took his iconic characters to Hollywood, and eventually, Disney grew into the immortal, all-pervasive giant we know today. While Walt may not have been making jelly, the naysayers would certainly be eating their words.2. Oprah Winfrey
One of modern entertainment’s saddest and yet most heart-warming tales of perseverance is that of Oprah.
Throughout her childhood, Oprah suffered terrible abuse at the hands of her family members. To make matters worse, Oprah gave birth at 14 years old and, tragically, the child passed away in infancy.1. Struck Gold
From the great heights of Oprah, let’s return to the smaller scale, for a couple of golden tales. In June 1858, a group of miners in Victoria, Australia decided to take a well-deserved break. All except for one of them.
He kept working, driven on by a desire for the riches buried in the rock. When his colleagues returned, they found him unconscious on the floor. After some investigation, they saw the cause: a nugget of gold ore, 18 inches long, there in the rock. Believe it or not, this isn’t the only story of its kind. In Napoleon Hill’s classic self-help book, Think and Grow Rich, he recounts the tale of a man, caught up in the gold rush of the 19th-century American frontier. In hopes of riches, a prospector pumped his savings into mining equipment and set out to make his fortune.