Criticism

 I recently read an article about two individuals who started with nothing but eventually achieved success because they kept a positive attitude despite receiving a lot of criticism.

Overcoming Criticism

One day Jack Ma invited 24 of his friends to his house to discuss an online business idea that he had. After a 2 hour pitch 23 out of 24 people in the room told him to scrap the idea. They told Jack he didn’t know anything about the internet or how to raise any start-up money. However Jack managed to quickly grow his e-commerce business to become one of the largest in the world, and is even competing with Google, and Amazon. Earlier this year Alibaba became a publicly traded company on the New York Stock Exchange. Alibaba is currently valued at roughly $230 billion. Its founder and executive chairman, Jack, is now worth about $19 billion. This categorically makes him the wealthiest person in China. 😀

Criticism Drives Ambition

Juliet Wu Shihong started her career as a humble cleaning lady. She worked from the lower ranks of a large firm. Her daily duties included pouring tea and sweeping floors. One day she forgot her staff pass and was denied entry into the building. She pleaded with the security guard to let her in 😥 but he took one look at her ragged outfit and push cart, and gave her the cold shoulder. Meanwhile she watched demoralized as other employees who were smartly dressed in business attire casually walk into the building without having to show their passes.

She had never felt so embarrassed and discriminated against. 🙁 Juliet never wanted to feel that way again. So at that moment she vowed to improve her social economic situation. From then on Juliet used every opportunity to get ahead. She was the first to arrive at work and the last to leave. She made every effort to learn from others. Her hard work soon paid off when she was promoted to a sales representative position. 🙂 Later on she became a regional general manager. And eventually she became the General Manager of IBM China. She later on also lead the entire team at Microsoft China Co. and was elected by Fortune magazine as one of the “most powerful business women in the world.” 😯 Not bad for someone who doesn’t even have strong academic qualifications.

Criticism can be more helpful than praise. Both Jack and Juliet were able to push through the criticism to achieve their respective goals. If not for the shameful incident that Juliet went through with the security guard, she would not have had the ambition to strive for more and her life would have turned out to be very different. Sometimes critics don’t want us to succeed because they’re afraid they’ll become jealous if we do. But that’s all the more reason for us to try. 😉

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