Famous people who bounced back from disappointment or failure

Sometimes it’s difficult to know what to do when things don’t go your way.

Maybe your team lost a big match or your exam results weren’t what you were expecting. It can be tough to cope with disappointing news or a failure, but it doesn’t have to mean the end of the road.

BBC Bitesize takes a look at some famous faces who coped with bad news or a loss but still went on to great success.

Dame Jessica Ennis-Hill

There’s plenty of pressure on any athlete competing at an Olympic Games for their nation.

But when it’s held in your home country and you’re one of the faces of the Games, that pressure ramps up even more.

So it’s fair to say, Dame Jessica Ennis-Hill might have felt a few nerves on the starting blocks in London in 2012, especially given her Olympic experience four years earlier.

Ennis-Hill was among the medal favourites for the heptathlon at the 2008 Olympics in Beijing. In May, just a couple of months before the Games in China, she withdrew from a competition in Austria with pain in her right foot. A scan revealed stress fractures, which ruled her out of her first Olympics.

But the Sheffield athlete was determined not to let that disappointment affect her. She recovered from her injury to win the world title in 2009 and successfully defended it two years later.

Facing more pressure than most as one of the faces of the London Olympics, Ennis-Hill dominated the heptathlon, winning the first of three British gold medals on a memorable Super Saturday in the Olympic Stadium – a true lesson in not being defined by your setbacks.

One Direction

For all five members of One Direction, joining the band must have been a real rollercoaster of emotions.

Louis Tomlinson, Harry Styles, Zayn Malik, Niall Horan and Liam Payne all headed to auditions for The X Factor in 2010 as solo singers, determined to become the country’s next pop sensation.

They were right – but not exactly as they planned.

The five were all told at the show’s infamous ‘bootcamp’ stage they wouldn’t be put through to the judges’ houses stage.

But they were offered a lifeline – the chance to form a new group. One Direction was born but there was more disappointment for the band once the live shows began.

The group finished third overall in the talent contest, missing out on the win and initial record contract to Matt Cardle.

They subsequently released their debut single, What Makes You Beautiful, the following September. The track topped the charts in the UK and was a huge hit around the world.

One Direction took an indefinite break in 2016, but so far have sold more than 70 million records. All five members have also gone on to have successful solo careers too – the very thing they were told at auditions that they weren’t good enough to have.

Michael Jordan

Arguably one of the greatest basketball players of all time, Michael Jordan is proud of his failures.

“I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.”

MJ has done it all. He’s a six-time NBA champion, twice won a gold medal for the USA at the Olympics and even teamed up with Bugs Bunny to defeat a team of aliens in Space Jam.

But despite all that success, the former Chicago Bulls shooting guard is more than happy to speak about the times things didn’t go to plan.

In an advert for a leading sportswear brand, Jordan acknowledged that he’d had plenty of bad days at the office.

“I’ve missed more than 9,000 shots in my career. I’ve lost almost 300 games. 26 times, I’ve been trusted to take the game-winning shot and missed.”

Even the best to ever play the sport can struggle sometimes. But MJ is proof that there are plenty of lessons to be learned when you end up on the losing side.

Vera Wang

For many, not getting selected to represent your country in a sport would be a huge disappointment – one that it might take quite a while to recover from.

Not for Vera Wang though, who took that blow on the chin and went on to become one of the leading names in global fashion.

Wang was a highly rated ice skater, winning national titles and was on the verge of qualifying for the 1968 Winter Olympics.

But she missed out on a place on the Games, something she has since described as devastating.

That non-selection led to her choosing to study abroad for a semester, to help her get over it, and it was during that period in Paris that she realised she had a love for fashion.

Initially working in fashion journalism, Wang became a designer at Ralph Lauren in 1987, before going independent two years later.

She is now one of the best-known names in fashion and has made wedding gowns for the likes of Ariana Grande and Victoria Beckham. She has also maintained her links with ice skating, creating outfits for a number of Olympians and being inducted into the US Figure Skating Hall of Fame in 2009.

This article was published in August 2021