Failure is great Teacher

Many of life’s failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.~Thomas A. Edison.Thomas Edison was perfect example of Trial & Error. As a child he was thought to be dumb and according to his teachers he will never succeed in his life. He tried and failed 9000 times before creating a light bulb. When someone asked him that how he felt after failing so many times; he replied I did not fail, I just learned 9000 ways of not making light bulb. Failure teaches us the process. It is the clue to redirect our effort in different direction and to follow different set of plan.

Alan Greenspan dream was to become famous musician as Benny Goodman. Against his parents’ wishes, he left his studies to join Jazz band. Very soon he realized that he is not as good saxophone player as he thought of himself. His musical band recognized his money management talent and they asked him to manage their finance for fees. The failure in music forced Alan to rethink his career goal and he went back to school to become great economist & later Fed chairman. Failure teaches us about ourselves and our ability, our talent and our limitation and it highlights our uniqueness and what we are capable of.

Few of us know that Samuel Langley, born in 1834, had one aspiration in his life; to fly. Determined, he devoured knowledge to become famous scientist & professor of his time and secured $50,000 from US government to materialize his dream. At his launch of Aerodrome, people from different places come to see the wonder of flying, but he lost. He was declared folly in newspapers & he gave up and died as a broken man. Two high school dropouts had the same dream except they did not get any funding and support. While experimenting to fly, they crashed so many times and each time they learned from their failure. And by December 1903, they soar high through the clouds of impracticality with their 1000 dollar homemade flying machine.

Samuel Langley failed & he gave up, Wright brothers failed only to get back up with more strength & determination. The moral is if you want to fly, be ready to fall so many times. Accept that failure is parcel of journey which makes you tougher & stronger. Failure is discouraging, it drains energy and resources, but it forces us to do things right. Failure separates those who think they want success from those who are determined to win.