Failure is the highway to success. Tom Watson Sr. said, "If you want to succeed, double your failure rate." If you study history, you will find that all stories of success are also stories of great failures. But people don't see the failures. They only see one side of the picture and they say that person got lucky: "He must have been at the right place at the right time."
Let me share someone's life history with you.
This was a man who failed in business at the age of 21 ; was defeated in a legislative race at age 22; failed again in business at age 24; overcame the death of his sweetheart at age 26; had a nervous breakdown at age 27; lost a congressional race at age 34; lost a senatorial race at age 45; failed in an effort to become vice-president at age 47; lost a senatorial race at age 49; and was elected president of the United States at age 52. This man was Abraham Lincoln.
Would you call him a failure? He could have quit. But to Lincoln, defeat was a detour and not a dead end. In 1913, Lee De Forest, inventor of the triodes tube, was charged by the district attorney for using fraudulent means to mislead the public into buying stocks of his company by claiming that he could transmit the human voice across the Atlantic. He was publicly humiliated. Can you imagine where we would be without his invention? A New York Times editorial on December 10, 1903, questioned the wisdom of the Wright Brothers who were trying to invent a machine, heavier than air, that would fly. One week later, at Kitty Hawk, the Wright Brothers took their famous flight. Colonel Sanders, at age 65, with a beat-up car and a $100 check from Social Security, realized he had to do something. He remembered his mother's recipe and went out selling. How many doors did he have to knock on before he got his first order? It is estimated that he had knocked on more than a thousand doors before he got his first
order. How many of us quit after three tries, ten tries, a hundred tries, and then we say we tried as hard as we could? As a young cartoonist, Walt Disney faced many rejections from newspaper editors, who said he had no talent. One day a minister at a church hired him to draw some cartoons. Disney was working out of a small mouse infested shed near the church. After seeing a small mouse, he was inspired. That was the start of Mickey Mouse. Successful people don't do great things, they only do small things in a great way. One day a partially deaf four year old kid came home with a note in his pocket from his teacher, "Your Tommy is too stupid to learn, get him out of the school." His mother read the note and answered, "My Tommy is not stupid to learn, I will teach him myself." And that Tommy grew up to be the great Thomas Edison. Thomas Edison had only three months of formal schooling and he was partially deaf. Henry Ford forgot to put the reverse gear in the first car he made. Do you consider these people failures? They succeeded in spite of problems, not in the
absence of them. But to the outside world, it appears as though they just got lucky. All success stories are stories of great failures. The only difference is that every time they failed, they bounced back. This is called failing forward, rather than backward. You learn and move forward. Learn from your failure and keep moving. In 1914, Thomas Edison, at age 67, lost his factory, which was worth a few million
dollars, to fire. It had very little insurance. No longer a young man, Edison watched his lifetime effort go up in smoke and said, "There is great value in disaster. All our mistakes are burnt up. Thank God we can start anew." In spite of disaster, three weeks later, he invented the phonograph. What an attitude! Below are more examples of the failures of successful people:
1. Thomas Edison failed approximately 10,000 times while he was working on the light bulb.
2. Henry Ford was broke at the age of 40.
3. Lee Iacocca was fired by Henry Ford II at the age of 54.
4. Young Beethoven was told that he had no talent for music, but he gave some of the best music to the world.
Setbacks are inevitable in life. A setback can act as a driving force and also teach us humility. In grief you will find courage and faith to overcome the setback. We need to learn to become victors, not victims. Fear and doubt short-circuit the mind. Ask yourself after every setback: What did I learn from this experience? Only then will you be able to turn a stumbling block into a stepping stone.
help you create an Action Plan for the rest of your life. If you have never created an Action Plan, it defines three things:
1. What you want to achieve
2. How you expect to achieve it
3. When you plan to achieve it
As you read this , keep a notebook handy, divided into three sections: your goals, the stages in which you plan to reach them, and your timetable for success. By the time you finish reading this book, your notebook will be the foundation on which you can build your new life. The principles in this book are universal. They are applicable in any situation, organization, or country. As Plato said, "Truths are eternal." Throughout the book I have used masculine gender, only for the purpose of ease in writing. The principles apply to both genders and are based on the premise that most people fail not because of lack of ability or intelligence but because of lack of desire,direction, dedication, and discipline.
A moral story
There was a farmer in Africa who was happy and content. He was happy because he was content. He was content because he was happy. One day a wise man came to him and told him about the glory of diamonds and the power that goes along with them. The wise man said, "If you had a diamond the size of your thumb, you could have your own city. If you had a diamond the size of your fist, you could probably own your own country." And then he went away. That night the farmer couldn't sleep. He was unhappy and he was discontent. He was unhappy because he was discontent and discontent because he was unhappy. The next morning he made arrangements to sell off his farm, took care of his family and went in search of diamonds. He looked all over Africa and couldn't find any. He looked all through Europe and couldn't find any. When he got to Spain, he was emotionally, physically and financially broke. He got so disheartened that he threw himself into the Barcelona River and committed suicide. Back home, the person who had bought his farm was watering the camels at a stream that ran through the farm. Across the stream, the rays of the morning sun hit a stone and made it sparkle like a rainbow. He thought it would look good on the mantle piece. He picked up the stone and put it in the living room. That afternoon the wise man came and saw the stone sparkling. He asked, "Is Hafiz back?" The new owner said, "No, why do you ask?" The wise man said, "Because that is a diamond. I recognize one when I see one." The man said, no, that's just a stone I picked up from the stream. Come, I'll show you. There are many more." They went and picked some samples and sent them for analysis. Sure enough, the stones were diamonds. They found that the farm was indeed covered with acres and acres of diamonds.*
What is the moral of this story?
There are five morals:
1. When our attitude is right, we realize that we are all walking on acres and acres ofdiamonds.
· Attributed to Dr Russel Conwell .
· Opportunity is always under our feet. We don't have to go anywhere. All we needto do is recognize it.
2. The grass on the other side always looks greener.
3. While we are dyeing the grass on the other side, there are others who are dyeing the grass on our side. They would be happy to trade places with us.
4. When people don't know how to recognize opportunity, they complain of noise when it knocks.
5. The same opportunity never knocks twice. The next one may be better or worse, but it is never the same one
