"The greatest teacher, failure is."
Yoda brings to life this ancient adage from a long time
ago in a galaxy far away. "The greatest teacher, failure is." Today the world frowns on failure and smiles upon instant gratification. Risk is avoided because of the great possibility of failure. But since the beginning, failure has given birth to ingenuity and ingenuity is the mother of invention. Thomas Edison was more of a persistent businessman than a scientist but after failing more than 10,000 times he was then able to find a light bulb that worked. In 1872 the plastics industry came to life because of somebody's mistake. A guy named John Wesley Hyatt was trying to win a contest to use another material for ivory used in billiard balls. He failed in the contest and spilled a bottle of collodion in the process. But the result was a flexible and strong material later sold commercially as plastic. And when Wilson Greatbach was working on a machine to record the heart beat he made a big mistake by pulling out the wrong sized resister and plugging it into the circuit. Ouch, but no, this became the first pacemaker. We are always making "mistakes" and stumbling across new ways to do something.
Failure is here to stay but how we respond to failure will
determine what ingenuity and invention will come of it. If the failure drives us to despair and give up we may be blind to ingenuity and invention. We will face despair after failure but when we get up we can see things from a new point of view. We can overcome our limit and go to a new level. This is the story of many who hit the wall and then came back stronger. As my dad would say, "What doesn't kill you will make you stronger." Or as Rudyard Kipling would say, "You'll be a man my son." This is the story of Michael Jordan. As a sophomore in high school Michael Jordan didn't make the varsity basketball team. This stirred him to practice like he never did before until he became Air Jordan. This is the story of J.K Rowling. Out of her complete failure of a life of unemployment and divorce came the works of Harry Potter. This is the story of Jim Carey who had to drop out of high school to get a job as a janitor to support his family. When he started stand up he was booed off stag. Yet he is one of the greatest names in entertainment history. This is the story of Bill Gates whose first attempts at business failed. If he had given up when Traf-O-data failed I wouldn't be using windows on this computer today. Behind every great success story is a story of total failure and overcoming failure to make them who they are today.
What can we learn from Yoda today?
First is the reality of failure. We don't always have to win and get what we expected coming. Unexpected events and failure will hit hard. Second, learn from failure. At the time of failure we should humbly learn from this great teacher. As important as it is to get up and persist it is just as important to change and grow and overcome the problem that knocked us down. At the time of failure as important as it is to press on it is equally important to listen to others and learn. Failure makes us humble to listen and learn from others and try new things we would have never tried in the pride of success. If you look through my blog at Steemit you will see that I started out with nothing. I had no friends here and I really did not know what Steemit was. The firsts posts I made usually paid out zero. If I got one upvote I was really happy but I was really a failure at blogging. I knew nothing about editing a post. I knew nothing about promotion and nothing about the community. I just kept posting. I was not going to give up. I looked at other's posts and tried some crazy things. I even made a contest and offered 1SBD when I didn't even have 1SBD. I was a crazy failure not knowing what I was doing here. Finally I overcame myself and asked people how they became successful in their blogs and tried to follow their examples. I had no money of my own invested here but I had some time to look around and find Steemians who were really good at doing this. This time of failure opened my eyes and gave me humility and courage to do something. I couldn't just let this blog die. Every day I am challenge to learn new things. In other words every day I am facing some sort of failure. That's OK for me. I am happy this way. I am a teacher and a learner.
Is there something you learned from failure?
What did you learn today?
Love,
365GROOVY
@mineopoly
