All Stories of Success Are Also Stories of Failures

Failure is the highway to success. Tom Watson sir; of IBM said, “If you want to succeed, double your failure rate”.  If we study the history, we will find that all stories of success are also the stories of failures.

But people do not see the failures. They only see the end result and they think that person got lucky. “He must have been lucky at the right place and at the right time”. But the fact is that the success you have in your hand at the last moment overshadows your failures of past.

So examples of failures of successful people are;

• Thomas Edison failed approximately 10,000 times before he got the final result of the electric bulb, which later became one of the greatest invention of his time.

• Henry Ford forgot to put the reverse gear in the first car he made.

• Abraham Lincoln who was one of the great president of USA, failed in business at the age of 21, was defeated in a legislative race at the age of 22, failed again in business at the age of 24, had his wife dead when he was 26, had a nervous breakdown at the age of 27, lost a congressional race at the age of 34, lost a senatorial race at the age of 45, failed in an effort to become vice president of the united states at the age 52.

• William Shakespeare, the person regarded as father of English literature, failed in the very subject in grade 5.

• The greatest scientist, Sir Albert Einstein, failed as many time as more than 8 in his school life in science. But he later became the man of century.

Now tell me would you call Lincoln a failure? He could have quit, hung his head in shame and gone back to his law practice. But to Lincoln, defeat was a detour, not a dead end. He had a strong commotion that whenever there is will inside you, even in the hardest situation you learn to find a way through.

Now, tell me do you consider Thomas Edison, Henry Ford, Abraham Lincoln, William Shakespeare, Sir Albert Einstein, etc as failures?

I am sure confident you don’t. They succeeded in spite of problems, not in absence of problems. But to negative thinkers, 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 falling forward rather than backward. You learn and move forward. Learn from your failure and keep going, learn to be victorious, not victims. Ask yourself after every set back: what did I learn from this experience? Only then you will be able to turn a stumbling block into a stepping stone. 

“Successful people do not do great things; they only do small things in great way.”

A burning desire is the starting point of all accomplishment. Just like a small fire can’t give much heat, a week desire can’t produce great results. So star to work hard from this very movement.