How Are You Inventing Your Life Today?
You're going to be inventing your life every single day. Today, you might decide to start a blog and make it your mission in life to spread messages of peace and love throughout the world. Tomorrow, you might decide to take on the world's ills by becoming a medical doctor. The next morning, you could become an expert in electronics or start a new business.
The point is that there are infinite possibilities for self-invention out there and only one person can predict what your invention will be tomorrow: You!
Because everyone is born with their own unique imagination, the ability to invent yourself is something like genetics — there are some who just seem fated for greatness while others have none at all. Many of us fall somewhere in between.
So, how are you inventing your life today? Or, better yet, how do you plan to reinvent yourself tomorrow?
The first step towards finding the answer is to answer some basic questions:
What are your passions and dreams? Is there something that you have always wanted to do but have never gotten around to doing it? Are there any activities or hobbies that bring out the best in you that you would love to turn into a career? Do you have any hidden talents that will make your life more interesting and fulfilled if you began to develop them in earnest? The answers to these questions will help lead the way towards figuring out what your next "life invention" will be.
Note: Even if you have not discovered your passion yet, don't worry. The next step is dedicated to describing the tools you will be able to use to make it easier for you to solve this problem.
So, in addition to keeping your passions and dreams at the front of your mind, it will also be a good idea for you to learn from some of the best inventors in history. Here's a list of 12 inventors who were able to change their lives forever by coming up with bold ideas and innovative products.
1. Thomas Edison: "Genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration" — Thomas Edison's life is certainly an example of this quote. Edison, who was known as a prolific American inventor, held 1,093 patents in his lifetime and was responsible for creating inventions that we use every day without realizing it. He is best known for inventing the phonograph and multiplex telegraph. He built his first laboratory in Menlo Park after he lost $40,000 on an invention of a stock ticker that would automatically print stock prices on a strip of ticker tape in 1875. This move proved to be instrumental when he invented the first commercially viable incandescent lightbulb in 1879 — something that he had been attempting to do for over 10 years.
2. Karl Benz: "The automobile is the poor man's horse." — In the early 1900s, there was no such thing as an automobile. Instead, they were called "horseless carriages" and people just took them for granted. Although many people had some interest in automobiles back then, most of them had no knowledge in how to create a vehicle or build one themselves. According to an article by David F. Noble, Karl Benz was able to come up with his own car that was completely functional and cost only $300. He later created the first prototype of the Benz Patent-Motorwagen, which featured an engine that ran off of a gas/petroleum mixture and could reach a top speed of 19 mph.
3. Henry Ford: "Coming together is a beginning; keeping together is progress; working together is success." — Henry Ford wasn't just an American inventor; he was also America's greatest industrialist who released one of the country's most successful car models ever, the Model T. His first car was created in 1896 but he didn't figure out how to mass produce them until 1903. He had originally wanted to call the car the "Quadricycle" or "Six-Wheeler," but the company was having so much trouble making these vehicles that they decided to instead make them only 15 miles per hour.
4. Thomas Alva Edison: "I have not failed 10,000 times. I have successfully discovered 1000 ways that will not work." — Thomas Edison is known as one of the most prolific inventors of all time. He held patents on 1,093 U.S. inventions and was even awarded the Medal of Honor, which was the highest award that could be bestowed upon anyone at the time. He also invented over 100 different things, including the phonograph and motion pictures. One of his most famous inventions is the incandescent lightbulb, where he held a patent on its use for a whopping 15 years!
5. Nikola Tesla: "Ere many generations pass, our machinery will be driven by a power obtainable at any point in the universe. This idea is not novel; it is a common place discovery." — Nikola Tesla was a Serbian-American who spent his life researching and experimenting with electricity. He was also one of the first inventors to use alternating current over direct current or direct current over direct current, as we know it today. He was able to hold various patents on electrical devices that included the radio, remote control, laser, X-ray and many others.
6. Mary Anderson: "I started out by buying a hundred and fifty pounds of materials at two dollars per pound and made the first airplane out of them." — Mary Anderson was an American inventor and aviation pioneer who created her own company called the "Anderson Aero-motors" in 1896. The aircraft she created was the first successful airplane that was able to fly across the country.
7. Alexander Graham Bell: "It is the intelligent man who creates, not the man who ponders." — Alexander Graham Bell, along with his assistants Edward Johnson and Elisha Gray, invented the telephone in 1876. It was during this time when Bell said "Mr. Watson, come here; I want to see you." This phrase is considered to be one of the most famous acknowledgements (thanks to technology) from a scientist.
8. Thomas Alva Edison: "The man who stops doing things that he is capable of doing will soon cease to live." — Thomas Alva Edison was a prolific inventor who once said, "I have not failed because I did not try." By this statement, he was able to make his point that you should always be trying your best at whatever you do.
9. Bill Gates: "If you are going through hell, keep going." — Bill Gates is the co-founder (along with Paul Allen) of Microsoft and is one of the most philanthropic people in the technology world.
Conclusion
There are people not only from the past but also from today who have been able to launch their own careers in life by coming up with bold ideas, creating them and developing them. These people were successful in their fields because they followed their passion and worked hard at pursuing it.
When you are working hard at something that you love and it's taking you places that you never thought possible, then your world is going to turn into a whole lot better place than it would have without this type of opportunity.