On Failure

Many of us tend to give up after one failure, a few failures or many failures. We can always have a justification in one way or another. Justifying our failures takes away the responsibility from ourselves. When there's an outside source that got in the way of our success then it's not our fault. Most people don't like to take responsibility for something gone wrong. The total opposite applies when something has gone exceptionally well. A big part of why this is so is because our egos won't allow us to take such a hit. It takes a lot to assume failure as our fault. But in that, you will never grow.

"Discontent is the first necessity of progress. Show me a thoroughly satisfied man and I'll show you a failure" --Edison

He also said something that has stuck with me for the longest time. He said it in response to his take on failing 10,000 times before making the light bulb work. I've heard from some other sources that it was only 1000 (mind you I use "only" very loosely) but either way, it took sheer resilience to keep on trying after so many failures. The response he gave was within the lines of "I didn't fail 1000 times, but I found out 1000 ways how not to do it." At least it's how it was told to me and that brought a major shift in my mind set. Imagine that you never see a "failure" as failing but, rather, a learning lesson? Can you look back at moments of "failure" and looking at it this way? Would've that changed anything?

Imagine how it felt like to fail, in the best case scenario, 1000 times? How many of us would've given up at 10, 100 or even halfway? It's people who look at things differently and want to make change so badly to where they can lose count at how many times they didn't get it right because they believed that they could make their truth materialize no matter what anyone else says. The reason I'm linking Jordan's video is because he never let failure bring him down. It's not even in his mindset. One must fail repeatedly before tasting victory, with a few rare exceptions. Here's a good mindset to have while in the trenches.

I'll keep it short since I can go on for a serious while on this subject.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=45mMioJ5szc

P.S. Having a goal is a necessity first and foremost. You can't get what you want till you are certain, beyond a doubt, about what you want. Goal-setting is crucial and is, preferably, categorized into short term, intermediate and long term. Sit in silence and pen it down if you haven't gotten that far