Forget Failure - Keep Learning and Find Success

One of the greatest basketball players ever to grace the hardwood was Michael Jordan. An old story has it that his Mother had to drag him into the house at bedtime. If she hadn't he surely would have stayed out at the basketball court - learning and practicing his chosen sport! 

One of the Secrets of Success appears to be a never ending taste for learning. It has been noted time and again that Thomas Edison tried over 1,000 different ways to create his light bulb. Were those attempts failures?  Not in his mind. They represented learning.  Learning numerous ways his idea did not quite work yet.

Still, he persisted and kept trying!

A few thoughts from Thomas Edison's Mother:

"It is true I was a Canadian schoolteacher, and this at a time when very few women taught, but I am the mother of him you call Thomas A. Edison. I studied and read and wrote and in degree I educated myself. I had great ambition—I thirsted to know, to do, to become. But I was hampered and chained in an uncongenial atmosphere.

My body struggled with its bonds, so that I grew weak, worried, sick, and died, leaving my boy to struggle his way alone. My only regret at death was the thought that I was leaving my boy. I thought that through my marriage I had killed my career—sacrificed myself. But my boy became heir to all my hunger for knowledge, and he has accomplished what I dimly dreamed. He has made plain what I only guessed. From my position here I have whispered secrets to him that only the freed spirits knew. I once thought my life was a failure, but now I know that the word 'failure' is a term used only by foolish mortals. In the universal sense there is no such thing as failure." 

There was a public library at Detroit where any one could read, but books could not be taken away.
All Edison's spare time was spent at the library, which to him was a gold-mine. All his mother's books had been sold, stolen or given away.  Books to a boy like young Edison are treasures-trove, in which is stored the learning of all great and good and wise who have ever lived.  When Edison saw the inside of that library and was told he could read any or all of the books, he said, "If you please, Mister, I'll begin here." And he tackled the first shelf, mentally deciding that he would go through the books ten feet at a time.

A little later he bought at an auction fifty volumes of the "North American Review," and moving the books up to his home at Port Huron proceeded to read them.

The war was on—papers sold for ten cents each and business was good. (Young Mr Edison sold newspapers.) Edison was making money—and saving it. He only splurged on books.

Keep saving your money. Keep learning. You can achieve amazing success surpassing even your wildest dreams.

  Learn more about reaching your peak potential!

The mind can not conceive what man will do in the
Twentieth Century with his chained lightning.
—Thomas A. Edison