Oprah Winfrey's Success

Winston Churchill once said, “Success is stumbling from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm”. No matter the profession, in order to succeed one must experience failure. A few good examples of this would be the living legacies that are known as J.K Rowling, Oprah Winfrey, and Michael Jordan. J.K Rowling upon writing her first novel was just a single mother living off welfare. Oprah Winfrey had a rocky start in life as well; on top of that she was the daughter of a teenaged low-income mother. Just like these two famous women, Michael Jordan too had to face his own unique adversities when he was cut from his high school basketball team. This demonstrates that in order to succeed one must experience failure, no matter the profession.

Her humble life began in one of the most dreadful backgrounds. She had to tussle through abuse, poverty and negative criticism in order to be the Oprah Winfrey we know and love today. Due to being born in a rural area in Mississippi to a teenage mother, Oprah was both physically and sexually abused. This caused her to run away from home and soon after led to the pregnancy of her baby, who unfortunately passed away after birth. In fact, Oprah had to overcome many challenges and obstacles during childhood. This included taking a beating regularly as her grandmother would whip her for almost everything. Due to this, she went to go live with her mother who had to work long hours as a maid. This caused Oprah to be neglected; which later in life led her to being sexually abused by friends and family. On top of it all she was living in poverty during these traumatizing experiences. Oprah once said, “I am so grateful for my years literally living in poverty because it makes the experience of creating success and building success that much more rewarding.” It was this mindset that carried Oprah through hard times and made her the strong women she is today. After her previously mentioned failed child birth, she escaped to live with her father. This was Oprah’s first taste of success as she was rescued by education. Oprah’s father made education a high priority,

Due to this, people probably think Michael learned how to shoot and dribble while he was still learning to walk. This unfortunately wasn’t the case because no matter how talented people thought Michael may have been growing up, he was never thought of as the best. In order for Michael Jordan to be the player we respect today, he had to endure through the disappointments of his small physique, being cut due to inexperience, and the inconsistency in his professional career. One main problem with Michael was that coaches couldn’t get past his little stature, but this setback or failure didn’t stop Michael. If anything, it pushed him to work even harder than his vertical gifted competitors. Michael got this competitive spirit from the natural causes of being part of a huge family with five brothers including Michael. When summer arrived, Michael was invited to a basketball camp to try and qualify for the varsity team group. Everyone in the camp admired Michael’s spirit but once again the coaches were discouraged, only this time it was due to his inexperience and talent. This inevitably led to one of the biggest failures in Michael Jordan’s life. What happened instead was that the coaches thought it might be a better idea for Michael to play on the junior varsity team to develop. This moment in time will always be deeply imprinted on Michael’s mind as once again he was being told he didn’t have what