Chapter 10: Learn the “Edison Mentality” “I failed myself to success” Thomas Alva Edison
“It is hard to fail, but it is worse never to have tried to succeed.” Theodore Roosevelt Let’s talk about failure! This subject is so important and yet
so misunderstood! Paulo Coelho hits the spot when he says
“There is only one thing that makes a dream impossible to achieve: the fear of failure.” The
fear of failure is the number one dream killer, but why? Why are we so afraid of
failure? Why can’t we see it like Napoleon Hill who indicated that “Every
adversity, every failure, every heartache carries with it the seed of an equal or
greater benefit.” Or in other words, how would our life change if we could see
failure exactly like Napoleon Hill did?
Why not see it as a learning experience that is necessary for growth and which provides us with information and motivation? What would happen if you could fully embrace the idea that in
reality failure is a sign that points towards progress?
Learn the “Edison Mentality”. Edison himself said things like “I failed myself to
success” or “I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.”
This is what enabled him to bring many of his inventions to us. The man just
didn’t give up!
Accept your mistakes as feedback and learn from them! Luckily, as kids we
didn’t have the mentality which many of us have adapted as adults – because if
we did then many of us wouldn’t know how to walk! How did you learn
walking? By falling many times and always getting up again. Unfortunately,
somewhere along the road you picked up the idea that failure is something
terrible. And as a result of this nowadays we fail once and then stop doing things
simply because it didn’t work out the first time, because we got rejected, because
our business venture didn’t work out right away.
NOW is the time to change your mentality towards failure! Why don’t you look
at it in this way from now on:
