Failure is great…just ask Edison
‘I make more mistakes than anyone else I know, andsooner or later, I patent most of them.’ – Thomas Alva Edison A thought that keeps coming to mind (and into my universe*) at the moment is how different people view failure, and what they do with it. I always like to think that I can view failure as an opportunity – eternal optimists do that. Yet such things aren’t as intuitive for everyone. So I particularly like this find: “As Edison sought the perfect filament for the light bulb, he tried literally hundreds of alternative combinations and experimented with hundreds of possible solutions, but none worked. A reporter asked him “how it felt to have failed a thousand times?” He responded: "I haven’t failed a thousand times. I’ve learned a thousand things that don’t work!" Did I mention he patented 1093 inventions? Anything you needed to learn recently? For those in need of comic relief/having trouble with going that far with your ‘failures’, here are two other ways to conceive of failure that could work: - ‘Fail once. Try again. Fail better.’ - ‘If you make a mistake, tell one person, learn from it, and move on. If you make the same mistake again – tell a different person…’ * the quotes via Ankesh Kothari, Paul Schumann and my life.
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November 2nd, 2005 at 2:48 am
some more quotes for you:
“If you want to increase your success rate, double your failure rate”
I think one of the founders of IBM said that
“Failure is the condiment that gives success its flavor”
I have no clue who said that one
“Failures are like knives that either serve us or cut us. It all depends on whether we grab them by the blade or by the handle”
I don’t think that’s the exact original quote, but I couldn’t find it online
and the most inspiring, in a twisted logic sort of way:
“Trying is the first step towards failure”
Homer Simpson
July 6th, 2006 at 8:46 pm
[...] 230; Failure Breeds Success Well I’ve said it for a while, for instance here in November and I know there are a LOT of people who have s [...]
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