Thomas Edison | The genius who never gave up

Thomas Edison was one of the most successful innovators in American history. He is recognized as a man of fame who never gave up while struggling consistently towards his way to success. He was very hardworking and consistent. Despite the several failures he faced he never gave up. He was very confident and has immense faith in himself. He states that, “Many of the life’s failures are the people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up”. His share of failures was indeed very long but his passionate persistence helped him attain success.

Thomas Edison’s early struggles :

Thomas was born on the 11th of February, 1847 in Ohio, United States. Right from his childhood, he was considered a hyperactive kid. One day, as a little boy, he got back home from school and gave paper to his mom. His teacher had asked him to hand it to his
mother. His mother read the letter loud and it stated, “Your son is a Genius. This school is not the right place for him, and there are no efficient teachers to train him. So, please train him yourself”.

Many years later after Edison’s mother passed away, one day, he was checking his cupboard and found a letter, and it was that his childhood teacher wrote to his mother that day. Edison opened the letter. The matter written in the letter was, “School cannot allow your son to attend classes anymore, he is mentally impaired. He is rusticated”. He became very emotional and wrote down in his diary, “Thomas Edison was a mentally deficient child, whose mother turned him into The Genius of the century”.

His invention didn’t happen overnight. He went through several failures before getting it right. Thomas Edison failed repeatedly during experimenting to devise a novel storage battery. While people tend to give up after a failure or two, Edison failed approximately 9000 times. All the other experiments went completely waste without any positive outputs. But he kept on trying. He lost a massive amount of money during this whole process and even after the money and efforts the machine failed miserably. However, Edison gained motivation from this major failure. He kept working harder each time he failed and put in more effort. Back to back all his inventions were a failure. His attempt to create the automatic vote tally system also ended up being a huge failure for the approach did not got enough support and government back-ups.

While everybody around didn’t trust him, he never lost his confidence. Following these he also formed a cement company by the name Edison Portland Cement Company in 1899. However people did not choose this due to the expensive pricing and this also failed with heavy economical and physical losses. Thomas Edison had several hurdles and challenges throughout his way. In response to a question about his failures, Edison once said, “I have not failed 10,000 times—I’ve successfully found 10,000 ways that will not work”. This confidence has majorly aided him in his successful journey. He learnt something from each of his failures and this helped him grow and evolve.

Life lessons from Thomas Edison’s life :

One important lesson from Thomas’s life is to never give up. Keep working hard and always have confidence in your abilities. Don’t let your failures pull you down. If you have sole belief in your idea, you have to work hard every day. Maybe it will continue for months or years, but at the end of the process you are sure to succeed.

Also Read : Shiv Khera | Every success story is also a story of great failures