The Whole Story

Never forget that you don’t know the whole story about other people. Some of the most successful people you can imagine have also dealt with the most devastating failures you can imagine.

Take, for example, Michael Jordan. Here’s a guy who is almost the personification of success when looking at his basketball career. After fifteen seasons in the NBA, he is hailed on the league’s website as “the greatest basketball player of all time.” One of the most electrifying players on a Chicago Bulls team that won six NBA championships during his tenure, Jordan was named the league’s MVP five times, was on the All-NBA First Team ten times, owns three All- Star Game MVP awards, ten scoring titles, three steals titles, and other honors. Although he retired from the NBA in 2003,  Jordan still holds the record for the highest regular-season scoring average and highest career play-off scoring average. In 1999, ESPN named him the greatest North American athlete of the twentieth century. He has been inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame two times. And don’t even get me started about the success of his licensing and endorsement operations.

Yet here’s how Jordan characterizes his career: “I’ve missed more than 9,000 shots in my career. I’ve lost almost 300 games. Twenty-six times, I’ve been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.”

Looking at Michael Jordan, would you have ever guessed that he failed so often? Most of us wouldn’t.

Oprah Winfrey was sexually abused as a very young girl. She gave birth to a son when she was fourteen years old, and the child died soon after birth. She contemplated suicide. But she finished high school, was a debate champion, and was chosen as one of two high school students in Tennessee to attend a White House conference on youth. After graduating from college and getting her first job as a TV coanchor in Baltimore, Winfrey was fired, told she was “unfit for TV.” In 2013, Winfrey, by this time the head of a billion-dollar media empire, told the graduating class of Harvard that “failure is just life trying to move you in a different direction.”

One more story. Here’s some text from a letter received by some hopeful young musicians back in 1979:

 

Dear Mr. Hewson:

Thank you for submitting your tape of “U2” to RSO. We have listened with careful consideration, but feel it is not suitable for us at present. We wish you luck with your future career.

Yours sincerely,

Alexander Sinclair

RSO Records (U.K.) Limited6

 

In case you didn’t already know it: “Mr. Hewson” refers to Paul David Hewson, the band’s lead singer. You probably know him as Bono.

Now, the point I’m making is not tied to the celebrity or financial success of these examples. The main message here is that you cannot, simply by looking at people, conclude anything about the challenges they have faced in the past or are facing in the present. It’s easy to think that nobody else has it as rough as you. Everything comes easy for them. The reality is we’re all a mess and we all need God.

Take time today to really get to know someone’s story.