I was thinking about Barry Moltz's book
Bounce! (Which we will hopefully turn into an on-demand course soon!) because I received this in my email:
Every Success Story Is Also A Story Of Great FailureIf we study history, we will find that all stories of
success are also stories of great failures. But people
don't see this 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.
1) 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.
The man was ABRAHAM LINCOLN.
2) In 1913, Lee Dee Forest, inventor of the triode 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?
3) 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.
4) 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
the Mickey Mouse.
5) 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 a 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.
6) Henry Ford forgot to put the reverse gear in the
first car he made.
7) Thomas Edison failed approximately 10,000 times
while he was working on the light bulb.
8) Young Beethoven was told that he had no talent for
music, but he gave some of the best music to the world.
Almost all success stories are stories of great
failures.
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 a new." In spite
of disaster, three weeks later, he invented the
phonograph. What an attitude?
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. 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 going.
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.
Isnt' that right Barry?
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