Notes

“Failure is simply the opportunity to begin again, this time more intelligently,” wrote Henry Ford. People are
constantly shaped and influenced by their experiences. People learn by doing. Often, people learn considerably
more from their mistakes than their success. For proof of failure driving success, consider examples from both
science and art, including Thomas Edison, Vincent Van Gogh, and Stephen King.
The famed inventor, Thomas Edison, rose to prominence in the late 19th century because of his successes, but
even he felt that these successes were the result of many failures. He did not succeed in his work on one of his
most famous inventions, the lightbulb, on his first try nor even on his hundred and first try. In fact, it took him
more than 1,000 attempts to make the first incandescent bulb but, along the way, he learned quite a lot. As he
said, “I did not fail a thousand times but instead succeeded in finding a thousand ways it would not work.”
Thus, Edison demonstrated both in thought and action how instructive mistakes can be.
The road to contemporary success for the 19th century artist Vincent van Gogh was even more dramatically
paved with failure. In current day, van Gogh is considered one of the most celebrated painters of all time.
However, during his lifetime, he was considered a disappointment. In current day, his paintings can sell for
millions of dollars, but he struggled to sell his paintings when he was alive. He even took to burning several of
his paintings because they would not sell.
The 20th century writer Stephen King, author of novels that were turned into popular movies (e.g., Stand by Me
and The Shawshank Redemption) also experienced failure. When he wrote his first novel, Carrie, he was
teaching school in rural Maine. Although he had previously had limited success in selling his short stories, it
took him 30 attempts to get Carrie published. He almost threw away the manuscript, but his wife pulled it out
from the trash and encouraged him to try again. It is hard to imagine Stephen King ever felt that defeated, isn’t
it?
Thomas Edison, Vincent van Gogh, and Stephen King demonstrate, in both science and art, that failure more
often than not precedes success. Whenever we learn a new skill - be it riding a bike, driving a car, or cooking a
cake - we learn from our mistakes. Few, if any of us, are ready to go from training wheels to a marathon in a
single day but these early experiences (these so-called mistakes) can help us improve our performance over
time. You cannot make a cake without breaking a few eggs and, likewise, we learn by doing and doing
inevitably means making mistakes. If we treat failure not as a misstep but as a learning experience the
possibilities for self-improvement are limitless.