From Rags to Riches: 5 Stories to Motivate You

Learning the rags-to-riches stories of wealthy, famous, and creative minds can boost your pursuit of your own life goals. Discovering how others pulled themselves up by their bootstraps and overcame obstacles motivates and inspires the rest of us.

Their stories remind readers that the most successful people often come from humble beginnings. Like them, you can achieve greatness, too.

​We all have what it takes to fulfill our purposes in life and turn our passions into lucrative careers or philanthropic endeavors. Their stories can be our stories, too.

Learning the success stories of others helps shift our mindset into the right gear. We gain:

Having the above three attributes adds extra oomph to your efforts. They’ll improve your odds of success and keep you going when the going gets tough.

The following stories will help solidify your mindset to make and achieve lifelong goals. After reading these, you’ll never again think you’ve been dealt “a bad hand” in life or that the odds are too stacked against you to dream big and go for it.

​Here are the tales of others who never stopped setting the bar, reaching it, and setting it higher. We hope they motivate and inspire you to achieve your heart’s desires.

Oliver Napoleon Hill cunningly crafted a life he dreamed of. Napoleon Hill’s books arguably started the lucrative self-help genre that paved the way for the famous motivational speakers of today, like Tony Robbins.

​Some might describe his early life as lonely and full of mischief. He lost his mother at the age of nine and grew closer to his stepmother than his own father. A storyteller through and through, he used his creativity and unbounded interest in the psychology of successful people to write “Think and Grow Rich,” building a legacy on thinking one’s way to success.

A household name, Oprah is best known for her successful talk show spanning two decades from the 1980s to the 2000s. She became the first black female billionaire. However, she endured things as a kid no child should ever experience.

Born to a single teenage mother, Winfrey’s grandmother raised her until she fell too ill to do so. Winfrey went on to live in extreme poverty. Repeatedly molested by a family member, she ran away from home at 13 and had a baby at 14 who died within weeks of birth.

​Still, Winfrey valued education and thrived in high school and college. She became well-spoken and well-read. Her excellent communication skills led to a job reading the news on the radio. Later, she co-hosted a morning news show and eventually went solo. She built a media empire and used her vast fortune for philanthropic endeavors.