In his first three years in business, Henry Ford went broke three times. Dr. Seuss’s first children’s book was rejected by 23 publishers. The twenty-fourth publisher sold 6 million copies. In 1902, a young poet’s poems were rejected by Atlantic Monthly as being “too vigorous,” but Robert Frost persevered. Michael Jordan was cut from his high school basketball team. The University of Bern rejected a Ph.D. dissertation, saying it was irrelevant and fanciful. Albert Einstein was disappointed but not down for the count.

Richard Hooker’s book M*A*S*H was turned down by 21 publishers. Then Morrow released it in 1968, and it became a barn-burning best-seller, a movie, and one of the most popular television series of all time.

In 1931, Pearl Buck received a rejection letter for The Good Earth that went like this: “Regret the American public is not interested in anything on China.” In 1932, she won the Pulitzer for this work. Sir William Golding, author of Lord of the Flies, was told, in 1954, “It does not seem to us that you have been wholly successful in working out an admittedly promising idea.”

In each of these instances, innovation, innovators, and positive thinking met, challenged, and overcame negative and myopic people—the type who go through life blocking light and avoiding anything that sounds iffy. Not every idea deserves to be supported. But I’m driven to total distraction when ideas are blown off because they don’t follow a well-known business model, scientific or engineering principle, or proven pattern, or are flippantly labeled as not being feasible by people who are experts in keeping up with the art of yesterday.

My friend Ceil Hughes, of blessed memory, up in northeastern Pennsylvania had the right idea. She approached life every day knowing there are no guarantees, no matter how many yesterdays proved something to be right or wrong. She wore a small gold scroll locket on a necklace. Inside, a piece of paper read: “Yesterday is history. Tomorrow is a mystery.”