I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life and that is why I succeed.
"I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work."
-Thomas Edison
People know Thomas Edison for being a pioneer of the industrial revolution, inventing the light bulb and phonograph in his prolific career. But few are aware of his many failures before finally achieving success.
Edison was ridiculed for "the thousands of failed experiments he had conducted with almost no tangible results to show for it."
Edison's 1,000+ failures were on display in the basement of his West Orange, New Jersey home, where he kept a stock of over 10,000 different materials he had experimented with to create a light bulb.
The more familiar story is that Edison made over 6,000 attempts before creating the light bulb.
However, it's not true. He did make 6,000 tries, but they weren't all in one year like most think. He did roughly 1,000 per year from 1878-1879.
Six thousand may seem like a lot, but many inventors worked years with little to show for it.
A patent clerk named Adolfo Nicola tesla had invented wireless communication in the late 1800s and patented dozens of ideas yet still made only $150 annually when he worked for Thomas Edison.
Tesla was a man of science and eventually went back to work for Edison. Still, his yearning for the natural sciences was so great that he eventually quit to "pursue his dreams."
"However, Tesla had done nothing with his wireless light bulb. He even lost the raw materials and knowledge that he had worked so hard to obtain from Edison."
Edison would become known as "the Wizard of Menlo Park," where he led a team of 40 scientists and engineers.
Thomas Edison demonstrated, contributed to, and inspired many inventions that we use today. He was the first to record an audio file on a phonograph. His work was a catalyst to the invention of motion pictures and talking movies.
Thomas Edison is one of the most prolific inventors of all time. However, it's essential not to forget the many failures he was so confident in, or else we would all make the same mistakes.
It's easy to mistake mistakes for failures, but they are very different. When you succeed, you may have failed 99 or even 1000 times along the way, but now you are achieving! We tend to think that if a great person like Edison had failed over and over again, then we must too. So many people believe that once you get it right, you are successful.
This is not true. You may make a few minor improvements or even fail miserably on the next attempt. Still, failure is not giving up when things seem impossible.
If Thomas Edison were here today, he would probably say something like: "I didn't fail once, I failed 1000 times, and that's why I succeeded." Edison didn't care if what he was working on wouldn't work. He knew that it would ultimately work, even if it were only in his mind. Edison knew that if you are going to fail, then failing will eventually lead to success, but only if you keep trying.
This is why I think 18th-century French mathematician Pierre de Fermat said: "Great successes, great failures, and great fortunes are not peculiar to France. They belong to all ages and all places, where there are men of genius, industry, and virtue."
What separates men like Edison from the rest of us is not their ability to fail better than everyone else, but their ability to keep going when everyone else would have quit.