Behind every success story is endless efforts, setbacks or some radical changes in direction and what not. Nobody becomes successful overnight. The road to success is paved with failures, but one must never view challenges as disadvantage. Success is not built on success. It’s built on failure. Here are the presenting inspiring stories of successful people who pushed their limitations, crossed hurdles, fought poverty and faced rejections to reach to where they are, an epic position. You can drive inspiration from their stories and learn how to be determined, committed and consistent towards your goal!
Don’t miss to read Part 1: Inspiring Stories of Successful People
Read out their stories of success and stay inspired.
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Sunder Pichai (Pichai Sundararajan)– CEO of GOOGLE
Sunder Pichai born in Madurai, 1972, belonged to a lower-middle-class family. He had never experienced the luxury of life. However, Pichai experienced his first technology at the age of 12. This was a landline phone that his father brought home. He had a remarkable skill of remembering numbers.
Likewise, he excelled in school, that paved in his way into metallurgy division of IIT, Kharagpur in India. Then after graduating he migrated to US in 1993. And initially planned to pursue Ph.D. from Stanford and embark on an academic career.
However, he dropped a plan and joined line of materials, a semi-conductor maker as an engineer and a product manager. But he didn’t work there for long. He later went to pursue MBA from Wharton university of Pennsylvania where he was named Siebel scholar and palmer scholar following the completion of MBA. He later joined GOOGLE in 2004. And his entry was marked with a launched with a free mail service called ‘Gmail’. That resulted Sundar’s to be a Google’s pride. The day of launch coincided with 1st April – The April Fool’s Day. Google became the default search engine of Microsoft’s own search engine called ‘Bing’.
Sundar soon started working on various other products such as Google gears and google pack. The success of google toolbar searches gave him an idea of making google own browser. He discussed this idea to the CEO Eric Smith and he denied. As he thought developing a browser would be very expensive affair. However, he convinced the cofounders of Google, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, to launch Google’s own browser. The task and the responsibility were given in the hands of Sundar. He made sure to cover all the negative points of the other browsers, the problems users faced while browsing, to develop the fastest browser ever. And in 2008; Google launched their first yet world’s best browser – Google Chrome!
Chrome turned out to become a success far beyond anyone’s imagination. Chrome, defeating all its competitors such as Internet Explorer and Firefox, eventually became the No. 1 browser in the world. Due to such immense success, he became an internationally recognised figure. Later in 2008 Sunder was promoted as the Vice President of Product Development. By 2012, he became the Senior Vice President of chrome and apps. He stepped into the shoes of Andy Rubin as the overseer of all Android related products.
Due to his excellent track record, Sundar attracted a lot of attention of the other technology powerhouses. He was approached by Twitter to come on board as the new CEO of Twitter. Other than that, he was also considered to succeed Steve Ballmer as the CEO at Microsoft! Sundar Pichai was the CEO in waiting for a long time. Mr Larry Page had tremendous faith in his capabilities, his sheer Diplomacy and Entrepreneurial Skills. On 10 August 2015, Sundar Pichai was chosen as CEO of Google!
2. Steph Hammerman – CrossFit level 2 trainer
Stephanie Hammerman is a CrossFit athlete, who has competed with success in multiple adaptive athlete competitions. Stephanie Hammerman is an Adaptive Athlete, who was born 3 months premature with cerebral palsy. When she was born, doctors said Stephanie hammerman she will never walk, talk, read nor write. She has attended mainstream schooling, college, a master’s degree. She is also a cancer survivor. She is a proof that the human body is capable of amazing things, only if one has determination and optimism as 29-year-old Stephanie Hammerman has shown.
She is the first athlete ever with Cerebral Palsy to compete in the sport of CrossFit and the first ever woman with Cerebral Palsy to become a CrossFit level 2 trainer. In 2018, Stephanie started her very own CrossFit gym, with driven fitness, outside Raleigh, North Carolina. In 2016, she was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s lymphoma, stage 3B. She was determined to beat it and continued to work out through her 29 weeks of treatment. She continued to do all of this, and after the first seven weeks of treatment, Hammerman was cancer-free.
As a cancer survivor and athlete, Hammerman knows that the human body is more capable than many may think – and she’s hoping to instil that lesson in others. She hopes that her journey will inspire people to fight for their life goals regardless of the various obstacles in life.
3. Nawazuddin Siddiqui – Actor
Nawazuddin Siddiqui born in 1974, in a family of 11 –parents and 9 brothers and sisters. He grew up in a small village of Budhana, Muzaffarnagar, UP, where education was very tough to get and only three things were known – wheat, sugarcane and guns. The fear of guns made his family, to search for a better livelihood. After moving out, the family had a decent living than earlier. He pursued his graduation from a university in Haridwar. And started working as a chemist in a petrochemical company in Baroda. There he found he wasn’t able to cope up, so he moved to Delhi and worked as a watchman at various places. In his search for work, he frequently visited theatres and plays, where he started to participate in them. He went on to join the National School of Drama (NSD) and graduated from it in 1996.
Later, he moved to Mumbai to try his luck in Bollywood. He walked from studio to studio, set to set, all day, finding himself doing only petty roles or the ones where he was just a part of a crowd. pay his rent. He walked every studio, stage, and wherever he could a chance and just became a part of a crowd.
Nawazuddin made his first debut as a terrorist in movie ‘Sarfarosh’ with famous actor Amir Khan. And then started following many small roles over next few years. Success didn’t come easily to him and he had to struggle for almost 12 years before becoming famous in Gangs of Wasseypur. That was the turning point of his acting career. Today, he is recognised as one of the most talented and versatile actors of Indian Film Industry.
4. Mary kom – Boxer
A sportswoman who has made India proud with her glorious achievements, Mary Kom is a boxer- the only woman to become World Amateur Boxing champion for a record six times, and the only woman boxer to have won a medal in each one of the seven world championships. Born on March 1, 1983 into a poor family she began helping her parents by working in the fields while still very young. As a school girl she used to play a variety of sports—hockey, football, and athletics—but surprisingly not boxing! When the Manipuri boxer Dingko Singh won a gold at the Asian Games in 1998, the girl was inspired to take up boxing.
In 2000, Mary began her training under Manipur state boxing coach, M Narjit Singh. Unlike other women in the society Mary didn’t hide her passion and worked hard to learn more. In 2000, She won Manipur State Boxing championship and her family got to know about her interest when they saw her success on newspapers. She kept aside all thoughts of the society and religion and pursued her dreams. She took it up as a challenge and became certain about her goals and abilities. Now she is at the peak of her success. For contribution towards sports, Indian government bestowed her with prestigious awards. Mary won Arjuna award in 2003, Padma Shree in 2006 and Padma Bhushan in 2013.
5. Steve Jobs-Co-founder of Apple.Inc
Steve Jobs was born in 1955 in San Francisco, was adopted by Paul and Clara Jobs. They always loved him like their own kid. His father showed Steve how to work on electronics in the family garage, demonstrating to his son how to take apart and rebuild electronics such as radios and televisions. As a result, Steve became interested in and developed a hobby of technical tinkering. Clara was an accountant who taught him to read before he went to school.
Jobs’s youth was riddled with frustrations over formal schooling. Jobs attended a local school in California He was such a prodigy that his teachers suggested he skip several grades, a suggestion his parents rejected. He was characterised by excellent test results and potential. But he struggled with formal education and his teachers reported he was a handful to teach.
Later he enrolled at Reed College, Portland, Oregon from where he dropped out after the first semester. But he continued attending the classes that interested him. One of them was calligraphy.
He got a job in Atari, a video game manufacturing company. He saved up and headed to India with his friend for ‘spiritual enlightenment’. They stayed there for 7 months, He completely transformed as a person. And returned home as a Buddhist.
In 1975 Jobs joined a group known as the Homebrew Computer Club. One member, a technical whiz named Steve Wozniak (1950–), was trying to build a small computer. Jobs became fascinated with the marketing potential of such a computer. In 1976 he and Wozniak formed their own company. They called it Apple Computer Company. Over the next few years, Apple computers expanded rapidly as the market for home computers began to become increasingly significant. They raised $1,300 in startup money by selling Jobs’s microbus and Wozniak’s calculator. Jobs was worth $1 million when he was 23, $10 million at 24 and crossed $100 million by the time he was 25. He was the one of the youngest people to be featured on the Forbes list of the country’s richest people
Today, he is known as the father of the digital revolution.
Feeling inspired from these Inspiring Stories of Successful People? Well, they all are just a few names taken from many inspirational success stories. You can too make your own story and add your name in the list. Never let anything come in your way to success. Don’t be afraid of walking slow, till the time you are ascending. If you believe you can, you will. Keep going.
Good Luck!
I’m greatefull and fully determined after reading these inspiring stories.Thank you very much.