It’s comforting to know that the people we hold in such high esteem have had to fight their own battles to get to where they are.

And there’s nothing more inspiring than the words of wisdom that pushed them to keep going, even when it looked as though there was no silver lining behind the clouds.

Ariana Huffington, founder of The Huffington Post, author and all-round journalistic powerhouse, has revealed the best career advice she’s ever received.

Speaking to Business Insider, she explains how her career has not been without its peaks and troughs:

“My career, and I would say the careers of most people I know, has not been linear,” she says.

Huffington experienced a series of bumps in the road to success, including a series of book rejections, saying:

“I remember when my second book in my 20s was rejected by 36 publishers — by which time I was tempted to change professions — I went and got a loan from a bank and kept going,” she says.

And what kept her going all that time? The advice that her mother gave her.

“Failure is not the opposite of success; it’s a stepping stone to success,” she used to say.

Being afraid of failure, in Huffington’s case, is not an option- it is merely a lesson to be learned and to move on from.

She is now the author of a whopping 15 books, and shows no signs of slowing down.

In her latest book, The Sleep Revolution, Huffington argues that sleep is also a vital tool for success.

She argues that we need to “dispel the myth that we can function perfectly on four or five hours” sleep a night, and welcome napping back into our working lives.

“Having a nap in the middle of the afternoon is actually a performance-enhancing tool,” she said told NBC’s Today on Monday.

The author and editor predicts that nap rooms in offices will one day be “as common as conference rooms.”

Here’s hoping.