Thanks to all of you who decided to participate in this year's scavenger hunt. Hope you had fun!
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Sunday, June 6, 2010
How Failure Breeds Success
How long did it take for humans to invent a controllable aircraft?
The first known drawing of a flying machine was done by Leonardo Da Vinci in around 1488,
but the first controlled flight of an airplane wasn't until 1903.
That's a span of 415 years.
So what happened in the meantime? Didn't anyone try to make an airplane between the time of Da Vinci and the Wright brothers?
Of course they did. There were many, many attempts to build aircraft before the Wright brothers. They just weren't successful.
So, how did the Wright brothers accomplish what other before them had not? Did they suddenly awake one day with a breakthrough idea?
No.
They learned from everybody else' failures.
Orville and Wilbur Wright took the knowledge gained from everyone who had gone before them, eliminated the things that didn't work, kept the things that did and added their own twist, "three axis control"; a system used to this day. The result? An airplane that could go up, down, left and right.
The Wright brothers themselves failed many times before they flew successfully. But each failure taught them something. By figuring out what went wrong, devising a solution and sticking to it, they were ultimately successful.
This is just one example of a process that has been repeated throughout history.
Everybody fails at some point. It is how we handle failure that determines whether or not we will eventually succeed.
The two simple keys to succeeding from failure are:
1. Don't give up.
2. Learn from your mistakes.
It's not paying attention to this second key that causes people to fail repeatedly. You see, in order to learn from your mistakes, you must first admit that you made one. If you can't admit to yourself that you made an error, you can't learn from it because in your mind, you haven't done anything wrong. Many people choose to blame others for their own errors and therefore never learn from them, dooming themselves to fail over and over again.
So try to remember that it's okay to make mistakes. Admit them, learn from them and do better the next time. That's how to be successful.
"Every failure brings you one step closer to success"
The first known drawing of a flying machine was done by Leonardo Da Vinci in around 1488,
but the first controlled flight of an airplane wasn't until 1903.
That's a span of 415 years.
So what happened in the meantime? Didn't anyone try to make an airplane between the time of Da Vinci and the Wright brothers?
Of course they did. There were many, many attempts to build aircraft before the Wright brothers. They just weren't successful.
So, how did the Wright brothers accomplish what other before them had not? Did they suddenly awake one day with a breakthrough idea?
No.
They learned from everybody else' failures.
Orville and Wilbur Wright took the knowledge gained from everyone who had gone before them, eliminated the things that didn't work, kept the things that did and added their own twist, "three axis control"; a system used to this day. The result? An airplane that could go up, down, left and right.
This is just one example of a process that has been repeated throughout history.
Everybody fails at some point. It is how we handle failure that determines whether or not we will eventually succeed.
The two simple keys to succeeding from failure are:
1. Don't give up.
2. Learn from your mistakes.
It's not paying attention to this second key that causes people to fail repeatedly. You see, in order to learn from your mistakes, you must first admit that you made one. If you can't admit to yourself that you made an error, you can't learn from it because in your mind, you haven't done anything wrong. Many people choose to blame others for their own errors and therefore never learn from them, dooming themselves to fail over and over again.
So try to remember that it's okay to make mistakes. Admit them, learn from them and do better the next time. That's how to be successful.
"Every failure brings you one step closer to success"
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