“While one person hesitates because he feels inferior, the other is busy making mistakes and becoming superior.” - Henry C. Link
The idea that there are good mistakes and bad mistakes is difficult for many people to grasp. To most people, every mistake is a bad one. But most successful people are not ones who never made a mistake. Rather, they are individuals who made many mistakes, learned from them, refined and improved their processes, ideas, or inventions, and ultimately achieved success.
Abraham Lincoln and Thomas Edison are excellent examples of this. Both men suffered through a series of failures prior to achieving great success. Lincoln was a failed politician. Edison suffered through multiple failed attempts before creating a functioning light bulb. But both continued to work hard in their respective fields and ultimately were rewarded. Had they stopped after the first time they failed, or worse, had they never tried for fear of failure, they would have never realized their dreams.
Mistakes that lead to increased knowledge or understanding are “good” mistakes. If learned from, they will eventually become one of the building blocks of your success. So the next time you’re tempted to give up after a few successful endeavors, or start to quit before you’ve started because you’re afraid of “being wrong” or “making a mistake,” remember this: had Edison quit after his first few unsuccessful attempts, it could have been decades before the world harnessed the power of electricity. Had Lincoln decided to give up on politics, the United States would have been robbed of one of its greatest leaders during one of its most important periods of history.
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