The world knows Elon Musk as a wealthy, imaginative genius — the man who is making electric cars mainstream and putting rockets in space. But when Musk was a kid growing up in South Africa, he got it bad from the others.He was “the youngest and smallest guy in his school” and that he was beaten and picked on all the time.
Musk’s brother, Kimbal, says “Kids gave Elon a very hard time. It’s pretty rough in South Africa. If you’re getting bullied, you still have to go to school. You just have to get up in the morning and go. He hated it so much.” Musk’s first wife, Justine, says “I don’t think people understand how tough he had it growing up. He was a really lonely kid.”
Musk survived the bullying in two ways.
The first was a sort of mental escape provided to him by his family. The Musks talked about themselves as a special family — one that could do great things
Musk is able to tell the story of forebears whose accomplishments serve as an inspiration and whose energy endures as an inheritance — a grandfather who won a race from Cape Town to Algiers; a great-grandmother who was the first female chiropractor in Canada; grandparents who were the first to fly from South Africa to Australia in a single-engine plane.
Musk’s second avenue of escape from bullying was through computers and business. Soon enough, computers and business became Musk’s life. He started an Internet company. Eventually, it merged with PayPal. Then PayPal went public in 2001, and Musk netted $170 million.
He didn’t stop there.
He took over an electric car company, Tesla, when electric cars were considered a silly dream. Now wealthy Americans buy more of his electric cars than they buy BMWs or Mercedes. He created another company, called SpaceX, which builds rockets and launches them into space. –
The point is: In childhood, Musk survived terrible bullying. In doing so, he learned that he could do things the other kids told him he couldn’t do. So he did, and he hasn’t stopped yet.
**Source: https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-was-lonely-2013-12
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