“They all laughed at Christopher Columbus, when he said the world was round.
They all laughed when Edison recorded sound.
They all laughed at Wilbur and his brother, when they said that man could fly.”
– Ira Gerswhin
Great results and great people weren’t born that way; it’s the result of trial and error. Most inventive and succesful people are usually the best at failing forward: they learn from what went wrong. Did you know that Steve Jobs was a repeated failure? He dropped out of college. And after being fired form Apple he launched NeXT Computer – a hardware failure that most don’t remember because he turned it into a software success. And Albert Einstein, whose very name we use as a short-hand for describing someone as a genius, was a lousy student (as were many successful CEOs and entrepreneurs). He literally failed his way through academics.
So what we can learn from this? That failure isn’t fatal. It is in fact usually required for innovation and success. If you want to grow you need to accept the fact that you are going to fail. Even if you are trying to deliver your best work. And that’s why true success is not measured by the amount of times you fail, but by the amount of times you get up and try again.
