Embrace Failure Until You Succeed

"Many of life's failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up." (Thomas Edison)

• Einstein's teachers said he would "never amount to anything."
• Scientist John Gurdon was told by a teacher that it would be "ridiculous" for him to go into science.
• J. K. Rowling received 12 rejections for her Harry Potter manuscript before it was accepted.
• Basketball legend Michael Jordan was cut from his high school varsity basketball team.
• Walt Disney was fired from his job at the Kansas City Star due to "lack of creativity".
• The inventor of the Xerox (photocopier) machine was rejected 20 times.
• Peanuts creator Charles Schulz's cartoons were all rejected by his high school yearbook.
• Thomas Edison failed at least 1000 times when creating inventions.
• Colonel Sanders was rejected dozens of times for his fried chicken recipe.  He didn't sell one franchise until the age of 65 when he was on Social Security.
• Fred Astaire was told:  "Can't sing.  Can't act.  Balding.  Can dance a little."  

If any one of these individuals had given up on their goals after failing, we wouldn't recognize their names today.  Too many people see failure as completely bad.  But failure is part of the process.  It's something we encounter on the road to success.    

It's all about perspective.  I have blogged a lot about authors and how they were finally discovered.  One author, rather than seeing her rejection letters as embarrassing, rather than seeing them as something to throw out, saves them all in a manila enveloppe marked "Tickets to the Game".  While she might not have a "yes" yet, she is still much further ahead than the author who doesn't stick her neck out at all.  At least she's in the game (http://alinefromlinda.blogspot.ca/2014/11/tickets-to-game.html).

The concept works in the field of science as well.  When Thomas Edison finally invented the lightbulb, someone asked him how he felt about failing 1000 times.  His response was:  "I never failed 1000 times.  The light bulb was an invention with 1000 steps."  Edison didn't apologize for his many failures.  He didn't make excuses.  He simply refused to give up.  He learned from his mistakes. "Failure is one of life's greatest teachers" (http://www.success.com/article/why-failure-is-good-for-success).

Look at the space race between the United States and the Soviet Union.  Sadly, Apollo 1 never made it off the launch pad and its crew died in a deadly fire.  Apollo 13 made it out into space but as it approached the moon it had a major mechanical failure and had to circle the moon and return home.  But Apollo 11 did reach the moon, making the Americans the winners of the Space Race, and later of the Cold War.  The Space program involved great risk, but it also reaped great rewards.

Author John Maxwell wrote Failing Forward:  Turning Mistakes into Stepping Stones to Success (https://www.amazon.ca/Failing-Forward-Turning-Mistakes-Stepping/dp/1491513136).  He reminds his readers that "great success depends on great risk".  He recommends to his readers to "confidently look the prospect of failure in the eye...to stop failing backwards and start failing forwards."  While society doesn't reward defeat, it does recognize those who turned their mistakes into stepping stones to success, like an author and her rejection slips or Thomas Edison and his lightbulb or the Space Race and its rockets.

Don't shy away from failure.  Embrace it...until you succeed.

http://pics-about-space.com/nasa-failures-and-successes?p=1

Your Imagination is Everything: It is the Preview of Life's Coming Attractions

http://www.thrive-team.com/2014/08/see-it-to-believe-it-the-power-of-visualization/

Two years ago, I wrote a post called Conceive, Believe, Achieve about the efficacy of visualization to reach your goals (http://alinefromlinda.blogspot.ca/2015/01/conceive-believe-achieve.html).  Visualization might be rare in your world, but in the world of professional sports, it's commonplace. Many athletes, including gymnast Mary Lou Retton, have proven that it works.

Colin Hiles, aka The Mindset Guy, maintains that visualization is the greatest accelerator to achieving your goals.  In his video, "How to Visualize to Achieve Your Goals Faster" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fxoToJCWA44), he points out that your subconscious mind plays such a vital role in shaping your actions.  "Your imagination is your preview of life's coming attractions," maintained Albert Einstein.  If you focus on what you don't want, and that's what worriers do, you will likely attract trouble.  If you focus on what you do want, and that's what people who pray or meditate do, you will likely attract good results.  

Colin Hiles explains that in visualization, in the process of developping a new mindset, you start with the invisible and make it visible.  For example, if you want to lose weight, you see yourself as that thin person.  Your thoughts are very deliberate at first.  He recommends that you focus on images as the subconscious mind understands images rather than words.  Furthermore, the subconscious cannot distinguish between something that is real and something that is vividly imagined.  If you close your eyes and hold the image vividly enough, you should get a physiological response.  For example, if you imagine yourself sucking on a lemon, you might start to pucker up.  However, if you imagine yourself vacationing on a beautiful island, you'll probably find your body relaxing.

Here is Colin Hiles' six step process of VISUALIZATION:

1.  decide what goals you want to achieve

2.  relax; get into an Alpha state, the bridge between the conscious and the subconscious

3.  alternate between imagining (belief/desire) and feeling (talk and act as if you have already reached your goal)

4.  focus (act ideally)

5.  repeat (twice a day for 5 minutes)

6.  cheat (use Colin Miles' step by step audio guide)

https://quotefancy.com/quote/3150/Albert-Einstein-Imagination-is-everything-It-is-the-preview-of-life-s-coming-attractions

Einstein's Letter to FDR Sparks the Manhattan Project

"In the course of the last four months, it has been made probable -- through the work of Joliet in France as well as Fermi and Szilard in America -- that it may be possible to set up a nuclear chain reaction in a large mass of uranium, by which vast amounts of power and large quantities of new radium like elements would be generated." (Albert Einstein)

It was the summer of 1939.  America seemed years away from war.  Its population was slowly coming out of the Depression and war was the last thing on its mind.  But war was brewing in Europe.  One European immigrant, with dishevelled white hair and a thick moustache, felt compelled to warn the President about a new invention, a possible weapon of war that was in the works.

Inventor Albert Einstein was lounging on his boat off of Long Island, when he was approached by fellow inventor Leo Szilard.  Szilard pleaded with Einstein to speak to government officials about the rising threat of an atomic bomb, given the recent discovery of uranium fission six months before.  Szilard had discussion the possibility of atomic energy with Alex Sachs, an unofficial adviser to President Franklin D. Roosevelt who suggested that he draft a letter to the President.

While Einstein was a life long pacifist, he agreed to help Szilard, wanting to keep such a weapon out of the hands of Nazi Germany.  Szilard wrote a four-page draft which he had Einstein proofread.  In turn, Einstein wrote a two page letter in German, which he had Szilard translate into English.  It was the second letter which Sachs delivered personally to Roosevelt on August 2, 1939.  

In the meantime, the storm clouds of war opened up over Europe that September.  Back in America that October, Sachs was given a private audience with the President.  America was still very much isolationist and had no interest in entering the Second World War.  However, Roosevelt did agree to form the Uranium Committee which was given $6,000 to research atomic energy, a drop in the bucket.  Roosevelt and his followers remained skeptical until December 6, 1941, the day before Pearl Harbor was bombed when an official atomic energy committee was set up.  It became the Manhattan Project in 1942.  

The atomic bomb, of course, was dropped on August 6, 1945 on Hiroshima, Japan, six years almost to the day after Einstein first sent his letter to President Roosevelt.  Nazi Germany never did get the atomic bomb.  Many of its great scientists, like Einstein, immigrated to America, some of whom helped with the Manhattan Project.  

Note:  For a copy of the letter, visit https://www.pinterest.com/pin/233483561906617124/.

http://www.businessinsider.com/einstein-and-the-atomic-bomb-2015-4