masterwordsmith-unplugged

Can you remember how you first fell down when you learnt how to walk? Or maybe how you almost drowned when you were learning how to swim and all you took home from that first experience was the taste of yucky water from the pool or the sea? If you cannot, it may be good. If you can, it could be good or bad depending on how you remember that failure and allow it to influence your life.

Here are a few examples of how failure paved the way to success for a few famous personalities.

1. Edison is considered one of the most prolific inventors in history, holding 1,093 U.S. patents in his name, as well as many patents in the United Kingdom, France and Germany.

In school, the young Edison’s mind often wandered, and his teacher, the Reverend Engle, was overheard calling him “addled.” This ended Edison’s three months of official schooling.

His mother then home schooled him. Much of his education came from reading R.G. Parker’s School of Natural Philosophy and The Cooper Union.

Edison developed hearing problems at an early age.
(extracted from Wikipedia)

2. Marilyn Monroe was dropped in 1947 by Twentieth Century-Fox after one year under contract because Production Chief Darryl Zanuck thought she was unattractive.

Undaunted by this rejection, she went on to become a Hollywood sex goddess, starring in All About Eve, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, The Seven Year Itch, Some Like It Hot and The Misfits.

You can read more about other famous successful personalities who despite encountering failure, marched on to greater achievements in their lives at this link.

3. Every baseball fan knows that Babe Ruth hit 714 home runs, but they probably won’t be able to tell you that he struck out 1,330 times.

4. R.H. Macy failed in seven different business endeavors before his store in New York caught on.

5. English novelist John Creasy got 753 rejection slips before he published his 564 books.

6. The next time you feel like quitting, remember this story:

*at age 22 he failed in business
*at age 23 he ran for state legislature and lost
*at age 24 he failed in business again
*at age 26 his sweetheart died and he was broken-hearted
*at age 27 he had a nervous breakdown
*at 34 he eventually regained his health,ran for Congress and was
defeated
*at age 39 he ran for Congress again, and lost again
*at age 46 he ran for senate and lost
*his ticket was lost when he ran for Vice President at age 47
*at age 49 he ran for Senate again, and was defeated;
*at age 51 he ran and was elected to the office of President of the
United States.
His name was Abraham Lincoln.

7. Jonas Salk worked for fifteen years before he found the vaccine for polio. That was fifteen years of continuous failure for one success. But look at the benefit to mankind.

Several years ago, Columbia University was revising a part of the curriculum for their graduate business school and asked dozens of successful businessmen what the most important ingredient for success was. The answer wasn’t charisma, education, money, salesmanship, or leadership qualities. It was persistence.

Learning to be a parent is learning from mistakes, not from success. You don’t learn much when you’re successful, but you certainly learn when you do something wrong. As a parent, I realize now the important of starting out ready to make mistakes (but learning from them) so that my kids can learn with me and even from my mistakes.

Success and failure have the same root–the desire to achieve–but avoiding failure is not the same as achieving success. Failure is determined by what you allow to happen, success by what you make happen.

It is extremely important to emphasize the concept of failure as a positive experience. The only time failure becomes negative is when you stop the effort after the failure, that is when you give up.

I have made up my mind that if I try anything worthwhile, I may probably fail at it first. I will not be discouraged but I will learn something, and try again.

To be honest, I feel quite inadequate in many areas but that is not going to stop me from trying.
So I am not going to worry about failure or the chances I miss when I don’t even try.
I guess we should learn to accommodate some levels of failure and pick from the failure essential lessons which could reposition ourselves more strongly.

I've decided to accept and conquer failure and know that yes, being human means I am prone to err but I realize that almost everyone fears failure but breakthroughs depend on it. So, no matter what, I will continue to improve myself in areas of weakness till I die.