How Many Times Was Walt Disney Told He Lacked Imagination?

In 1919, Walt Disney was fired from his job at the Kansas City Star. His editor told him he lacked imagination and had no good ideas.

He went on to start his own animation studio. It went bankrupt.

He moved to Hollywood with $40 and half a suitcase of clothes. He created a character called Oswald the Lucky Rabbit. The studio stole the rights.

So he created a mouse named Mickey. The country laughed — who wanted to watch a cartoon mouse?

Snow White, his first feature film, was called "Disney's Folly" in Hollywood. Industry insiders predicted it would ruin him.

It became the highest-grossing film of 1938.

Decades later, when Disneyland opened in 1955, Disney had approached 302 investors to fund the park. Every single one had turned him down. A reporter asked Disney what he thought about the critics who'd said it would fail. He smiled and said: "I could never convince the financiers that Disneyland was feasible, because dreams offer too little collateral."

And when asked, near the end of his life, what he would say to the Kansas City Star editor who had fired him, Disney never expressed bitterness. He said he was grateful — not for the firing, but for what it forced him to do. "All the adversity I've had in my life, all my troubles and obstacles, have strengthened me," he said. "You may not realize it when it happens, but a kick in the teeth may be the best thing in the world for you."

The people who said Walt Disney lacked imagination were right about one thing:

What he had wasn't imagination. It was something bigger — the refusal to let other people's limits become his own.

In his later years, Disney was asked how he felt about all the people who had told him no, all the critics who had predicted his ruin. His answer was characteristic: he didn't seem to carry the weight of it. He'd already moved on to the next impossible thing.

"All our dreams can come true," he said, "if we have the courage to pursue them." Not in spite of the failures. Because of them.

Today's question: What failure in your past are you still carrying that might actually be the foundation of what you're building now?