There’s a story about Edison  that’s worth repeating.

While Edison was trying to invent the light bulb, rumor has it that the more he failed, the more excited he became.

In fact, once he failed a few thousand times he became really excited.

I know  . . . How nutty is that?

I’m thinking that if it were today, and he were to become that excited, after thousands of failures . . . people would wonder if Tommy was sneaking a joint into the lab between failures!

Edison told a reporter that he was excited because he was running out of the wrong approaches . . .  so the right one had to be just around the corner!

That’s a really interesting outlook . . .

1)    It presupposes that there is indeed a solution . . . we just haven’t found it yet.

2)    Instead of harping on all that “I suck” type of stuff . . . we look at it as “I’m going to rock because the law of suckiness states that there isn’t an infinite amount of suckiness” (something we need to remind ourselves when we watch all those tryouts for American Idol)

Additionally . . .

We typically won’t change things (or have a willingness to change things) when things are simply awesome!

It’s in these moments of failing that we

1)    Try new things and stretch

2)    Get a really cool education

3)    Discover a better opportunity that was inspired by failing to reach the original outcome.

Tomorrow I’ll share a story of a recent failure I had, how I felt during the situation and how I chose to handle it.

Meanwhile, I want to leave you with a quote that I believe underscores today’s message.

Many of life’s failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.

Thomas Edison

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