It’s “Make Your Own Luck Day” tomorrow (what will they think of next?), and so I want to inspire you with a few famous failures. People who defied the odds, made their own “luck,” and became some of the most fantastically successful individuals of all time.

Ever feel like great success can never happen to you? This is where you must work on sharpening your Mental Edge. These amazing-but-true stories should help motivate you…

Cut from the high school basketball team. He went home and locked himself in his room and cried… Michael Jordan

He was told by a teacher he was “too stupid to learn anything…” Thomas Edison

His fiancé died, he started two businesses that failed, suffered a nervous breakdown and was defeated in eight elections… Abraham Lincoln

A comment from his music teacher, “as a composer, he is hopeless…” Ludwig van Beethoven

His parents thought he was mentally retarded. A teacher told him “You will never amount to anything…” Albert Einstein

Turned down for an engineer’s job at Toyota and unemployed, he built and sold scooters to his neighbors to make ends meet… Soichiro Honda

He failed in school, and suffered from a speech impediment… Winston Churchill

What you can learn from this, personally and professionally, is quite obvious,. It’s YOU who makes your own luck and your own success. Circumstance or luck are just excuses.

Whatever it is you want from life (and from health), go get it.