Every Success Story Is also a Story of Great Failures

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 had 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.

The motivation to succeed comes from the

burning desire to achieve a purpose. Napoleon Hill

wrote, "Whatever the mind of man can conceive

and believe the mind can achieve."

A young man asked Socrates the secret to

success. Socrates told the young man to meet him

near the river the next morning. They met. Socrates

asked the young man to walk with him toward the

river. When the water got up to their neck, Socrates

took the young man by surprise and ducked him

into the water. The boy struggled to get out but

Socrates was strong and kept him there until the boy started turning blue. Socrates pulled his head out of the water and the first thing the

young man did was to gasp and take a deep breath of air. Socrates asked, 'What did you want

the most when you were there?" The boy replied, "Air." Socrates said, "That is the secret to

success. When you want success as badly as you wanted the air, then you will get it." There

is no other secret.

A burning desire is the starting point of all accomplishment. Just like a small fire

cannot give much heat, a weak desire cannot produce great results.

IF YOU THINK

If you think you are beaten, you are.

If you think you dare not, you don't!

If you like to win, but think you can't,

It's almost a cinch you won't.

You think you'll lose, you're lost;

For out in the world we find

Success begins with a fellow's will;

It's all in the state of mind

If you think you are outclassed, you are,

You've got to think high to rise,

You've got to be sure of yourself before

You can ever win a prize.

Life's battles don't always go

To the stronger and faster man,

But sooner or later the man who wins

Is the man who thinks he can.

-By Shiv Khera