Don’t call that a failure

If you faint in the day of adversity, your strength is small. Proverbs 24:10

FEW PEOPLE doubt that Thomas Alva Edison was the greatest inventor of all time. It is
estimated that he patented over one thousand inventions, with the electric light bulb and
the phonograph (ancestor to the modem stereo equipment) being two of the most notable
inventions. His contribution was also significant in the development of the telephone
system, moving pictures, the typewriter and many other important inventions that gave
the world the technological profile it now has.
How did Edison achieve so much? Because failure never caused him to get dis-
couraged. The story goes that alter crying thousands of times to make the light bulb work
without success a friend tried to console him. Edison's response was immediate.
“I haven't tailed! I've discovered ten thousand ways that don t work.
The most curious thing about Edison is that when he was barely eight years old his
schoolteacher called him an “unproductive student." On that day, Edison came home
crying. When his mother found out what had happened, she immediately went to the
school and told the teacher he didn't know what he was talking about. Edison never forgot
that experience. At that moment, Edison purposed to prove that his mother wasn't
mistaken.
If there’s anything to learn from die experience of this “unproductive student," it is the
importance of having the right attitude when you fail, because failing doesn't necessarily
mean not reaching a goal. It just means that something didn’t work, or that you didn’t
persevere long enough to reach it. Therefore, if you’ve “failed” recently, the following
words written by an anonymous writer may help you:
“Falling and picking yourself up, failing and starting over again, choosing a path and
having to abandon it, and having to bear some suffering; don't call those things
adversities, rather call them wisdom. Fixing a goal and having to change it for another
one, avoiding a challenge and facing a new one, aspiring and not achieving, wanting and
not knowing, and advancing but not arriving, these things aren’t failures, they are lessons.
Said another way,
FAILURE MEANS TO STOP TRYING