When our children were schooled at home, I would try to find stories with which to inspire them to go above and beyond. Coming across such a story today, I thought it might be a good idea to start a thread where we can each post examples. Here's the first one from me: the table tennis player with no arms. Not only is his ability amazing, it was fascinating to watch him serve.
I just joined this forum and I guess I can't yet post URLs, so my contribution to this thread is to tell you to Google "Thomas Edison the value in disaster" to find a blog post about when Thomas Edison's factory went up in smoke when he was 67 years old and yet he didn't let it deter him. He started completely over from scratch. And this was before he successfully invented many of the everyday items we use today...
I think a great story which inspires (for all ages) is "The Go Giver" by Bob Burg and John David Mann. Technically, it's a business book, but it's set as a parable which sends the message of that old proverb "give and you shall receive."