Self Belief

I was listening to a great interview recently in which a famous person was speaking about a particular time in their life.

This man went through a very traumatic birth in which forceps were used to help to deliver him into the world. However the use of the forceps left him with a slightly deformed face and he talked with a slur.

Growing up his dream was to become an actor but because of his looks and the way he talked he was often ridiculed and faced more than his fair share of rejection, but he would never let go of his dream.

He eventually grew up and got married and managed to get the odd walk on part in a TV show which normally only lasted a few seconds.

Times were hard and his wife understandably would nag him to get a job, as money to put it mildly was in short supply. He although racked with guilt refused to get a nine to five job, believing that if he did, he would be sucked into the rat race and never achieve his dream of becoming an actor. This put tremendous pressure on his marriage the final straw being when he pawned his wife’s jewellery to buy some much needed food.

Now living alone in his flat he became desperate and out of pure desperation he decided to sell his most prized possession in the whole world, his dog! All he wanted was $50.00 for his precious friend, he eventually sold his dog for $25.00 and walked away distraught at what he had done.

To get warm he used to sit in a local library and read Edgar Alan Poe books eventually becoming an expert on the man. While reading his books one day he had a brain wave, why not write a film script? That night he watched Muhammad Ali give a white boxer a terrible beating for 15 rounds, but the white boxer would not give up. This inspired him to write his script and the Rocky film script was born, the young mans name was Sylvester Stallone.

But that’s not the end of the story, in fact far from it. He took the script to as many agents as he could find and all but one rejected it saying it was rubbish, predictable, boring etc.
The one who did like it offered him $1500, which was a lot of money back then especially to a guy who had nothing. He was tempted by the money but said you can have the script as long as I can play the lead role, at which point they laughed at him and told him to leave.
He walked away feeling lower than ever. A week later they called him back, “right Mr Stallone we will give you $20000 for the script (a tremendous amount of money) to which he replied as before you can have the script as long as I can play the lead role. This time they didn’t laugh but were angry with what they saw as his stubbornness and told him to leave.
A week later they called him back and offered him a $100.000 that would have made him a rich man but he just said the same thing you can have the script as long as I can play the main role. At this point they withdrew the money and said, “ok you can play the lead role but we will go back to our first offer of $1500 dollars which he gratefully accepted.

But the story doesn’t end there; he waited on the corner of the road where he had sold his dog for three nights in a row. On the third night he saw his dog with the man who had brought him. Sylvester told him what had happened and offered to double the mans money and give him $50.00 to buy his dog back. The man refused he ended up accepting $100 and a role along with the dog in the first Rocky film. The rest is history!

The moral of the story hang on in there and follow your dreams.

NOTE: I found this at Tony Somers Blog: http://www.realcombatsystem.co.uk