“When you have exhausted all possibilities, remember this: you haven’t.” – Thomas Edison
I’ve been talking to a lot of people in the last year, and an interesting theme I am seeing is the response to failure.
There are two types of people: those who get paralyzed by it, and those who keep going.
Who are you?
Did you know it took Thomas Edison 1,000 attempts to create a lightbulb??? What tenacity! Think about his persistence – he made mistake after mistake, over and over, yet kept going and trying. It was his mindset that made all the difference in the world. When a reporter asked, “How did it feel to fail 1,000 times?” Edison replied, “I didn’t fail 1,000 times. The light bulb was an invention with 1,000 steps.”
He took his failures, learned from them, and then turned it into a massive success! Instead of seeing them as failures, he saw them as small steps towards achievement. His was committed, and he kept going in the face of failures, and now, 100 years later, we still use his invention and know his name.
I read a great quote by Bill Gates, “It’s fine to celebrate success, but it is more important to heed the lessons of failure.” This is where mindset comes in: failures can teach you an insane amount if you view them as lessons. If you view them as life-stopping events, you will never learn anything from them.
In the midst of failure, take some time and find the lesson. Decide to have a positive mindset in regards to failures, because, here’s the thing: failures will happen. It’s part of life. So don’t be shocked when it happens, it’s not IF it happens, it’s WHEN it happens.
You have two options: Quit or keep going. History doesn’t remember the names of quitters, only the overcomers.
The time you spend in the dirt, grinding, and hustling is where you grow the most. It’s where character is developed. So embrace the failure, learn from it, and get going.
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