Fly on the E-Commerce Cyberwall

Try One More Time
Here's a favorite quote from Thomas Edison:

"Our greatest weakness lies in giving up. The most certain way to succeed is always to try just one more time."

Thomas Edison was the greatest failure who ever lived. That is, he's the greatest failure who ever lived if you define failure by the number of times someone tried something and didn't get the results he sought.

Depending on which account you read, Edison tried hundreds -- or even thousands -- of different materials before he found the one that made it possible for a light bulb to give light. If he had given up one time sooner, he would have left nothing but that long line of failures as his legacy.

It only took one that worked, though, to turn those attempts into a smashing success.

How many of us have the persistence of Edison? How many of us are willing to keep trying until we get the results we seek?

Don't get me wrong. I'm not advising that you try the same failed plan over and over. Nor do I urge you to try things randomly with no plan. I'm urging you to do like Edison did.

He went into his experiments intent on learning. With each material that didn't work, he assessed why it fell short. Then he looked for another material that could overcome that shortcoming.

On another occasion, Edison said that the secret to his success with the light bulb was that he ultimately found so many materials that didn't work that it was finally easy to narrow it down to the one that would.

That's the path to take. Try. Test. Learn. Then put what you've learned into action as you try, test, and learn again. Keep doing that and you're sure to succeed.
Jeff

Labels: inspirational quotes