Sometimes things just don’t work out. It is a fact. No amount of coaching, training and self help literature can make any of us impervious to the eventuality that whatever we are doing, however well laid the plan is, sometimes things just don’t work out the way we want them to. And in the face of failure, staying motivated, keeping the faith, plough through and continuing to take action can be difficult.

I guess the motivational cliche is the quote of Thomas Edison, American inventor, scientist and business man who invented the light bulb … eventually. It famously took him more than a thousand attempts to create the device that we all know today. And after one thousand attempts, the press of the time accused him of failing, to which he famously answered, “I did not fail. I have successfully found 1000 ways not to make a light bulb.”*

Talk about reframing! To be unsuccessful at your goal one thousand times and still be undeterred from acheiving it would take an enormous amount of self belief and confidence. Most people do not have that much.

The important thing to remember at times of deferred success is that failure is a stepping stone to success provided that you learn from your failure, figure out why it was a failure and do not make the same mistake next time. There are only a finite number of mistakes you can make when trying to achieve a goal. As long as you attempt the task n+1 times, success should be guaranteed!

*I’m a stickler for correctness of information, so I’ll state from the outset that this quote may not be word for word correct. It has been requoted and misquoted so many times that it was impossible to find a source of the quote that I could rely on. Nonetheless, the meaning conveyed is the same.