Stepping stone to greatness

AS children we are often taught that failure is bad.

Doing badly in a school test often ends in some sort of punishment.

As a result, many of us enter adulthood thinking our failures are a negative, a sign we’re just not good enough at something, or a reason to be ashamed of our attempts.

But what if the reality was actually the opposite? What if it’s our failures that in fact give us the tools we need to achieve massive success?

Here we have rounded up a selection of household names who initially struggled to get where they are today.

Oprah Winfrey, the American talk show host, actress, producer, and philanthropist had a rocky start to life. She was brought up in a low-income family and says she was once sexually abused. She became pregnant at age 14, but lost the baby and went to live with her father.

OPRAH WINFREY: Explains that failure is part of the path to success.

She was fired from her first job on a local television station, but has since gone on to become one of the most popu- lar, influential and wealthiest women in media with television shows and even her own TV channel.

In 2013, she was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Barack Obama. Forbes state her net wealth as around $2.9 billion (€2.7 billion).

In her own words: “Failure is another stepping stone to greatness.”

J K Rowling, the woman behind the most famous wizard of all time, Harry Potter, has said she believed she was a failure before penning the novels.

She was a single, divorced