20 Real Life Inspirational Stories of Success and Struggle

Success stories and reading biographies of successful people bring benefit and progress to humans because inspirational success stories give you a strong incentive to face life's difficulties and achieve your ambitions and goals. Dear reader, we all experience moments of failure, but a strong person can turn failure into success, defeat into victory, despair into hope.

Note: These are not only success stories. You will also find inspiring stories about hope, determination, and willpower.

Top 20 Real Life Inspirational Stories of Success

 

1- Hope Makers, The Story of The Little Girl Karima

The Egyptian girl Karima was born in a rural community and came out to life without arms, she had to go through the difficult matters of life such as helping with housework, feeding the birds and going to school alone. Although she faced a lot of trouble, she turned the pain into hope and turned her feet into arms doing everything from combing her hair, eating by herself to drawing beautiful paintings.

My Dear Friend,
if you are suffering from a bitter experience, do not weaken and never give up, a lot of people have gone through the same painful ordeals and didn't let them destroy their lives or their future, and their secret is their willpower.

A soul without determination is a ship sailing without a captain or a carriage moving without a driver.

2- Window Opener - Louis Braille Story

This is one of the most famous struggle stories of all time, its hero Louis Braille, who was born in France and after several years lost his sight in an accident that damaged the optic nerve of his eyes. Days passed, and he was thinking about how to create an easy way to write for the blind, this topic engrossed him day and night, he began with trying to devise symbols to express phrases and words, and he never forgot his dream to open new horizons for the blind and invent a way to facilitate reading and writing for them.

After five years of attempts and hard work, he achieved what he wanted, and his method relied on prominent points expressing the letters of the alphabet, and in 1930 he published a letter explaining his new method, but he was attacked and opposed. Despite that, he did not give up but continued to teach his way to his students. And although the state did not recognize him for a while, he didn't give up.

Days passed, and one of his students played in a big theater in Paris and she received warm applause, but after the clapping stopped she told the audience, I do not deserve anything from your clapping, It's the right of Louis Braille, who opened a window for us blind people to look at the world. After that, the press supported Braille until the state officially recognized him as the blind person who lit the darkness of the blind, and when his friends came to congratulate him, he said to them, with tears flowing from his eyes, I did not cry in my life except for three times, the first time when I lost my sight, the second when I knew the secret of writing and reached the alphabet I want and the third time is now because I made sure that my life did not go to waste.

Dear brother,
God has created you with unique abilities and talents, do not be lost in life but know your way and set your goals and go ahead in life to achieve it, and strive every day to live a noble life.

There is a small bridge between failure and success, which is willpower.

{true motivational stories}
 

3- Victory of Hope - Helen Keller Success Story

 The American Lady Helen Keller was blind, mute, deaf, and yet she lived a successful life and wrote eighteen books. All her books gave people hope and happiness. Despite being deprived of her three senses, she became a role model for success for the disabled and non-disabled alike. This woman was able to overcome her inability with perseverance until she became the miracle of the twentieth century.

dear reader,
Do not live your life anxious, troubled, or helpless. Try to live an efficient life through hope. Hope makes the disabled cross barriers and achieves amazing successes equal to the successes of others who are not disabled.

Hope is the smile we see amid tears.

{real life struggle stories}

4- Success despite pain

Amy Purdy lived a normal life with her family, and her dream was to travel around the world and live in a snowy city to practice her favorite hobby, which is snowboarding. Amy graduated from high school and traveled to work in a cold area and here one of her dreams came true.

Amy had a bacterial infection in her body at the age of nineteen and went into a coma for several days. Doctors told her parents that their daughter's chance of survival is only 2%, and in order to survive her legs had to be amputated.

Amy came back to life again but without legs, so she broke down and lived the worst days of her life. Her parents tried to motivate her and sit with her for a long time, but her psychological and internal pain was stronger than all incentives, so she used to sleep for long hours to escape the painful reality she was living.

After a while, Amy decided to think positively and turn her fiasco into a huge success to inspire other people with special needs. Amy got out of bed, wore her prosthetic limbs and told herself that her prosthetic legs don't freeze when ice skating, while her toes freeze from the cold.

Amy came back to practice her favorite hobby as if nothing had happened to her. In 2005, she co-founded a non-profit organization to help people with physical disabilities; she was training them to participate in the World Games. In 2014 Amy won a bronze medal at the Paralympic Games and in 2018 she won a silver medal. Amy became the best female with special needs skating in the world.

Amy Purdy is now an American actress, motivational speaker, model, clothing designer, figure skater, and author.

Amy proved to the whole world that real disability is in the mind, not in the body.

{inspiring business stories}

5- Beethoven Success Story

Beethoven excelled in the world of music, even though he didn't hear his music because he was deaf. He didn't feel frustrated and continued to compose and play great pieces of music until he became one of the greatest musicians of all time, although his music teacher described him in his childhood as hopeless.

6- Crazies Changed The World!

When the Wright brothers thought about inventing a flying machine (the airplane), people accused them of insanity. When people knew that Edison was trying to invent a lamp that lights up the darkness of the world, people accused him of stupidity and asked him to stop that stupid idea.

As for Isaac Newton, the discoverer of gravity, people described him as ignorant and foolish, but to this day his name is prominent in the pages of history. When Antonie van Leeuwenhoek invented the first microscope that enlarges things 300 times their normal size, people mocked him and accused him of madness.

And When Paulo Coelho insisted on disobeying his parents' orders and becoming a novelist, he was accused of stupidity and entered a psychiatric clinic several times. And in the end, he proved himself and became a famous novelist and one of his novels sold more than 300 million copies.

Most of the successful people, inventors and scientists, people accused them of madness and stupidity, but they believed in their potential and abilities, so they changed the world for the better.

Dear reader,
Every human being in this universe has abilities, specifications, and skills that distinguish him from others. Discover your strengths and work with all your energy to develop them, focus on your skills and abilities and develop them every day and do not fear failure, the frightened person did not taste success.

Write your name in the pages of history and do not be an ordinary and traditional person, be distinct from others. No human being on earth has succeeded except through experience, risk, training, determination, commitment, and hard work.

7- The Success Story of Abraham Lincoln

This is one of the most remarkable success stories, its hero is Abraham Lincoln, who has lived a failure's life for thirty years, Failure accompanied him all day and went to bed with him at night.
 
- In 1832, he fell in the Nomination to the Council of Ministers.
- In 1833, his work failed.
- In 1943, he lost his membership in Congress.
- In 1856, he lost the position of Vice President.
 
Despite all these frustrations, obstacles, and difficulties, he didn't give up and he was able to use all his power to accomplish what he wants. And after a journey of resistance that lasted for many years, he was elected as the President of the USA in 1860 and he was one of the greatest American presidents.

The surest way not to fail is the determination to succeed.

{inspirational real life stories}
 

8- Story of the richest writer in the world, female success stories

When Joanne Rowling was a little girl, she loved to write fairy tales and she was telling these stories to her little sister. There was no support from her parents because of family problems, so she couldn't use all her time to develop her hobby.

When Joanne graduated from university, she worked as a secretary and used her free time to write some stories and novels to develop her hobby. When Joanne was 26, her mother died, her psyche was greatly affected and she lived in frustration and isolation.

One day, Joanne was going from Manchester to London, and the train was late for a few hours, so she took advantage of the time to write a novel, and actually started writing her novel by typewriter. After that, she moved to Portugal, married a journalist there and had a daughter with him, but her marriage did not last long because of her husband's violence, so she moved to Scotland to live with her sister, and all this time, she didn't forget her novel.

Despite all the harsh conditions she went through, she believed in her abilities and had hope for a bright future thanks to the typewriter that she never stopped writing on, she had great determination to complete her novel, so she was always writing at her home, in cafes, and in her spare time. In 1995, Joanne finished writing the first part of her novel, so she began to present her novel to publishing houses, but it was rejected by 12 different publishing houses.

After two years of rejection, she received approval from publishing house No. 13, which finally agreed to publish the novel on condition that she didn't put her full name in the novel because she's an unknown writer, Joanne agreed immediately and her first novel was published.

The novel won the Nestlé Smarties Book Prize a few months after its publication, and in 1998 it was auctioned in the United States and won by a company for £105,000.

Do you know what this novel is? It's a Harry Potter novel, whose brand value today is estimated at more than $15 billion. This seven-part novel has been translated into more than 65 languages and has sold more than 500 million copies worldwide. Harry Potter movies series, with revenues of more than $7.7 billion were also released.

J. K. Rowling is now married and has three children, and in 2004 Forbes magazine reported that her fortune exceeded one billion dollars. And with this wealth, she became the first billionaire in the history of female writers.

{business success stories}
 

9- Electronic Gold Mine, Interesting Entrepreneur Stories

Nowadays, you don't have to hold a pickaxe and dig underground in search of gold or buried monuments, and you also don't have to go to South Africa looking for diamonds. The real treasure of our time is now on the Internet; you can reach it just by your bedroom! You can build a website with a unique idea or create an application that will impress people. The world of the Internet is full of businessmen who started their projects from their bedroom, and among these are...

Ukrainian Developer Jan Koum

Jan Koum emigrated with his mother to the United States of America at the age of only 16. His mother worked as a babysitter, and Jan relied on social assistance until he started working as a cleaner for a store. Jan entered the world of technology at the age of eighteen, and in 2007 he and his friend applied to work at Facebook, but were refused.

In 2009, Jan Koum and his friend thought about creating a new application to facilitate chatting between people, and they founded WhatsApp. They lost some money at first, but after a year the app began to bring them some simple revenues, and after two years luck smiled at them and the program became widespread among all segments of society.

By 2013, WhatsApp had more than 200 million users worldwide, and in 2014 Facebook bought WhatsApp for $19 billion, and Jan Koum share of the deal was about $6.8 billion.

The moment Jan Koum signed the WhatsApp contract at the door of the center that was providing him social assistance.

A Billion Dollars From The Bedroom!

David Karp was born in 1986 and since his childhood was fond of computers and technology and used to spend most of his time in his bedroom to explore everything new in the world of technology. David learned how to program and designed simple programs for several companies at the age of 11, he left school at the age of fifteen to explore the digital world more and more, and began self-learning from home until he finished high school.

In 2005, David thought about creating a blogging platform and social network, and in 2007 he launched Tumblr from his bedroom, and the number of users reached about 75,000 in just two weeks. When the site became famous and supported more than 108 million blogs, Yahoo offered David to buy it, after several negotiations between them, David managed to sell the platform for $1.1 billion and became the CEO of Tumblr.

{inspirational stories of success}

10- From The Garage To Global, Millionaire Success Stories

Jeff Bezos quit his prestigious job to establish Amazon company, He started his own small business in 1994 at a garage in Washington. At first, he only sold books on the Internet, but the company quickly developed and became a huge online marketplace, where you can buy anything from it with one click. Amazon is now the most famous company in the world to buy from the Internet with an estimated staff of more than 1.3 million employees. The company's revenues in 2020 were estimated at more than $386 billion. All of this started from a small garage!

When Steve Jobs was a little boy, his parents abandoned him, and he was adopted by an American man, but that didn't prevent him from succeeding and didn't make him feel inferior. In 1976, he founded Apple company with his friend Ronald Wayne, and the company was launched from the garage of his adoptive father's house. At first, the company made computers with limited capabilities, but it grew day by day until it became one of the greatest electronic companies in history. The company's revenues in 2021 were estimated at $365 billion.

Sergey Brin and Larry Page succeeded in creating the most famous search engine in the world (Google) in 1998, they started from a small garage in California. And within five years, Google's capital became $20 billion. Today Google searches are estimated at about 3.5 billion searches every day!

My dear,
Face your fear and break all the restrictions that hinder your success, don't give up the top and refuse to be a normal person. Your determination to succeed will bring you greatness.

{inspirational life stories}
 

11- Inspirational story of Louis Pasteur

The French chemist Louis Pasteur who discovered the process of killing germs known as pasteurization was suffering from paraplegia and epileptic seizures. Nevertheless, he made a great effort in searching for ways to treat the diseases prevalent in his time.

12- Hope And Life Story

The American scientist Harold Wolff conducted research on 2,500 American soldiers who had been captured by the Japanese forces during World War II and discovered that they all became severely ill and some of them even died as a result of the cruel treatment they had suffered. 

 

The researcher found that very few did not suffer from the disease and he discovered that the reason for this was the hope that filled their hearts to return to their homeland. At the time when most of them have lost their hope in life so the disease attacked them to death.

My dear friend,
without a sense of hope, you will not be able to face the harsh conditions that ruin your life.

Hope is the only bond that keeps the heart from being broken.

{motivational success stories}
 

13- Success Despite Disability

Abdul Rahman Al-Hamdan was born in 1997. And since his birth, he was suffering from spina bifida, which made him unable to move his lower limbs. His parents took care of him and did not prefer any of his brothers over him. When he was 10 years old, his parents began teaching him how to swim, and they faced difficulties because there was no swimming coach to train the disabled. His father obtained the International License for Disabled Swimming to act as his son's coach. In this way, the training problem was solved.

Abdul Rahman practiced swimming for a year and despite his disability and the difficulty of his movement, he was able to swim for short distances, after another year of commitment and perseverance, he was able to master swimming in open waters. Abdul Rahman has participated in many water competitions and achieved more than 15 local and 6 international medals. In 2004, he won the title of world champion in swimming for people with special needs, which was held in Shanghai, and the Chinese press praised Abdul Rahman's performance.

Abdul Rahman died in 2021 at the age of only 23. Although he lived a few years, he inspired many people, gave them hope for life, determination and perseverance in the face of harsh conditions.

{inspirational short stories}

14- Struggle Story of John Milton

The English poet John Milton wrote his timeless masterpiece, (Paradise Lost) after he became blind. In this wonderful book, Milton explained God's greatness.

My dear,
You must work and fight to reach success in the battle of life instead of cursing the circumstances in submission and surrender.

15- God Knows Where I Am

One of the miners was working in a gold mine up the Rocky Mountains, while he was working, a huge ice block fell on him from the mountain and buried him under white tons of snow.

 

 When he regained consciousness, he found himself trapped under tons of snow, alone, and no one knew his predicament. Despair overcame him, then he thought that God knows where he was. Only then he started breaking the ice and saying,
 God, you know where I am.

 

Whenever he felt tired and desperate, he was repeating
 As long as God gave me the air to breathe and the strength to fight, I will not give up.

 Fifteen hours later, one of the rescuers said to him, "You're a miracle man," the worker smiled and said,
 No, but God knows where I am.

Dear Sir,

Hope is a simple word, but it has a great meaning. Its letters on my page take little space, but in the soul of a desperate person it fills books.

Hope doesn't get sick as long as faith is healthy.

{great success stories}
 

16- The Ladder of Success

A 110-year-old peasant woman from an Argentine village decided in 1999 to learn to read and write.

Her only goal, she said, was to prepare herself for the challenges of the next century.

She is simply a woman who responded to life.

My dear,
Respond to life and move forward towards a better life. Don't let your current situation hold you back.

 17- Book With Eye Blink, Short Story About Hard Work

Jean-Dominique Bauby graduated from university, worked in Paris and joined several French newspapers and magazines. Step by step he became a prominent journalist, and was later appointed editor-in-chief of the famous French magazine ELLE. When Bauby reached the age of 43, suddenly he fell into a coma that lasted twenty days. When he regained consciousness, he found himself completely paralyzed, unable to speak, and could only move his left eyelid.

The days passed, and Bauby defied all difficulties, searched for a way to communicate with humans, and found that the best way was to express what he wanted to say by moving his left eyelid. With this challenge, he decided to write his famous book (The Diving-Bell and the Butterfly), his assistant came to him every day for four hours to write what he was saying to her through his eyes.

Bauby wrote his 144-page book with an effort of 200,000 blinks, the book was published in 1997 and Bauby died three days later. The book achieved great sales, and in 2007 the French movie (The Diving Bell and the Butterfly) was released, taken from this wonderful book.

{success story examples}
 

 18- Successful Person Story

This is a story of a man who was sentenced to life imprisonment. This man loved music and didn't say to himself that he won't get out of prison until the day he died, so he refused to live in grief and despair and used his time to learn and study music in the prison until he became one of the greatest musicians of his time. After a while, he was released from prison and discovered that the whole world hears his music.
 
Dear reader,
Don't despair, don't give up, and do your best to reach your goal. The greatest feats in the world came from people who started small and worked hard.

{inspirational real life success stories}
 

19- The key to Success

John Foster worked as a supervisor in a ceramic Factory, and this factory was achieving great progress thanks to the secret industry innovations that the head of the factory kept as a secret and conducted his experiments in a small laboratory that no one else could enter. Foster wanted in any way to know the secrets of the profession. 

 

One day the head of the factory forgot the small notebook that contained all the combinations and secrets, and when Foster found it, he was thrilled to have the key to fame and success in the world of Ceramic. Time was enough for him to copy all notes, and when Foster grabbed the treasure, he was caught in a violent struggle between Foster, the potter who longs for success and fame, and Foster the man of principles who fears God. The conflict was harsh and short, but in the end, Foster put the notebook back in its place and refused to succeed by deception. Then he confessed to his boss what he was intending to do, and the boss forgave him.

 

My dear,
A person may be successful in a certain field by deception and lying, trust that this type of success does not continue and does not earn the respect of others, and usually the fate of this false success is a failure in the end. Your success is sweet and gives you true happiness only when these successes are the fruit of your diligence.

Honest failure is better than cheap success

{inspirational stories about hard work}
 

20- Lizzie Beautiful

Lizzie with her parents when she was a little girl

American girl Lizzie Velasquez was born in 1989, four months before her due date. Doctors predicted that she did not survive long because she was born with a rare disease that only three people in the world carry. Because of this disease, Lizzie became without adipose tissue which means that her body does not contain fat at all, and she will not be able to gain weight; in addition to her suffering from premature aging and weakness in the growth process.

Her mother fed her well to keep her alive and treated her as if she had no diseases. She would take her out to play with the children and buy her beautiful clothes so that she would not feel inferior among her colleagues. Lizzie grew up and at the age of four lost her right eye due to her illness. When she entered school, she was bullied because of her body shape. Nevertheless, she excelled in school until she successfully graduated from high school.

At university, there was a lot of talk about her and there were many looks of mockery and disgust at her because of her skinny body, which does not exceed 27 kg until someone filmed a video and posted it on YouTube for the purpose of mocking her. The video was watched by more than four million people from around the world in a short time, and there were thousands of negative comments on her like, she's the ugliest woman in the world.. do a favor to the world and shoot yourself!

Lizzie read all the comments written about her and felt very sad because of people's insulting comments on her appearance. Lizzie did not allow these comments to destroy her, so she decided to fight and respond to these negative people in her own way.

She had many goals, including becoming a motivational speaker, publishing a book, and graduating from college. Lizzie worked with great determination to take revenge on those who mocked her through her achievements, and she responded strongly to everyone who underestimated her. At the age of twenty-two, she was able to start her first lecture on motivation. In 2010, she published her first book (Lizzie Beautiful), graduated from Texas State University, made many good friends and now has millions of fans.

After Lizzie succeeded in achieving her goals, she posted a video in which she said: "Do you remember that awful video against me? I didn't go down to those people, but I took revenge through my achievements in the battle between the video of the ugliest woman in the world and me."
 
Lizzie has given more than 200 workshops on dealing with fear and overcoming obstacles, she has been a great success and is still receiving many offers to present motivational courses.

Lizzie has proven to the world that the beauty of the face is incomplete without the beauty of the soul.

how can I achieve success in my life story?

Work to succeed, God didn't give you the spirit of failure but gave you the spirit of success, and to reach success, you must take several steps which are:

1- make sure that your life is meaningful
2- Set your goals in life
3- Know your priorities
4- don't give up on your dreams
5- make a plan to accomplish your goal and don't rush yourself
6- be positive and optimistic
7- believe in yourself
8- Strive for what you want
9- Be happy with what you have and always encourage yourself

Dear friend,
Discover your tendencies, know yourself, increase your effort, set your goals, and embark on the difficult path to success, go to the end and do not look back, move forward, and smash all obstacles and climb all the mountains until you reach success befitting you, and know that you will face many storms and hurricanes in life but don't give in to them.

Get up now and go on the road to success, Waiting up to the last moment is the philosophy of the loser and the lazy.


Here's the end of the stories.
See you in new stories ❤️
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