Whenever you think of the Walt Disney Company, several things come to mind. Whether it's the Disney Parks all around the world, the Walt Disney Studios, the movies, the characters, or whatever it is that your mind associates with the Disney magic, all those things were created because of one man's dreams and aspirations.
Walter Elias Disney was born in 1901, but his vision and his ideas are still very relevant in 2019. Some people like to say that he was an ordinary man with extraordinary talent, but that couldn't be further from the truth. He was, in fact, an ordinary man with ordinary talent, but he knew how to exploit his talents and he put them to work, which is exactly what sets Walt Disney apart from any other person in the world. He never settled for anything, and he never felt good with staying in the comfort zone.
One of Walt Disney's most famous quotes was "keep moving forward," which reminds us that he was always on the lookout for new things and new ideas. I have no idea why, but today's society loves the comfort zone, and once something goes right, then we're inclined to repeat it over and over again because we live in constant fear of making even the slightest mistake. And yet, we live in a world that thrives on likes, instant success, and admiration, but what we don't know is that, in order for us to keep growing, we have to fail at least once. We need to learn how to fail if we want to succeed.
Mr. Disney once said, "it's important to have a good hard failure when you're young." He obviously knew what he was talking about because he built a multibillionaire empire out of basically nothing. This doesn't mean that you should strive to fail if you're succeeding, because that would be contradictory to the whole point. What he meant was that if you do fail, you must do so gracefully, always keeping your goal in mind and your head up high. When Walt Disney was only getting started with his career as a cartoonist, he created Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, only to have another man claim him as his own. If he had given up after that failure, no one would have ever known the Mickey Mouse we know today.
It's very important for us, the younger generations, to learn from Walt Disney's successes and to stop focusing on things that come fast and easy, because those things end just as fast and just as easily as they came. We need to embrace the wonders of our generation and the world that we live in, but we always need to proceed with caution. We should never lose sight of our identity because that is the one thing that makes us unique in a world full of people who want to be anyone but themselves.
I, for one, will never stop dreaming and believing that whatever I put my mind to will actually happen with hard work and determination, and I will never doubt myself. Nothing in this world is impossible, especially if you can see it in your mind. Once you're able to visualize whatever it is that you want, then it shouldn't be too hard to get to work and make it happen. Like Walt Disney himself once said: "If you can dream it, you can do it. Always remember that this whole thing was started with a dream and a mouse."
