Raw Talent - and Unaccepted

Bob Dylan was booed off the stage at his high school talent show. 

Randy Travis, Country Music legend, was rejected by every major music label - twice. 

Barbara Walters was told to stay out of television in 1957 by a prominent producer. 

Lucille Ball was told by the head instructor of the John Murray Anderson Dram School, "Try another profession.  Any other."

John F. Kennedy lost the election to be President of his freshman class at Harvard.  He failed to win a post on the student council as a sophomore and later dropped out of Stanford Business School 

Steven Spielberg's mediocre grades prevented him from getting accepted to UCLA film school. 

Could not those interviewers see who was standing in front of them?  Didn’t they get a hint, a stirring in their inner being that this person was a great one in the making? 

Those are the first questions that come to mind when I consider these individuals who later became stellar personalities in their respective fields.

And then I quickly turn to this … after those failures and rejections, what did each of them do?  What were the steps that took them from rejection to recognition?

That is the valley through which we all travel.  Raw, untested, unrecognized talent is a hard thing to bear.  Innately, we may know we are something special, or have some special gift, yet how do we turn it into a useable and recognizable opportunity? 

That is the dilemma that Bob, Randy, Barbara, Lucille, John and Steven faced, and they probably faced it more than once in their lives.

And what do any of us do about that in our own lives?

Ah, that is worth reflecting on.

Of course, they kept going.  That is obvious by their now recognized success status.  They each went back to their practice room, or office, or home, or wherever they went and tried again.  They continued honing their skill.  They read more, studied more, practiced more.

They took their small measure of skill and made it grow some more.  Perhaps they found more and better role models.  Maybe they went back to class, read more, sought out a mentor. 

Bottom line – they found a way to take their raw and earnest talent and turn it into a recognizable skill that others wanted.

They worked in the dark, in the unknown school of oblivion until their skill met opportunity and recognition.

Raw and unaccepted is no fun. 

And those are the perfect conditions for becoming whatever it is your heart desires.

So much of this is up to us, isn’t it?

This is my morning reflection!

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