Picking Up Yourself from Falls

Attitude, Challenges in Life, Determination, Inspiration, Michael Jordan, Perseverance, Picking up yourself from falls, Quotations on failures, Reflection, Thomas Edison

Picking Up Yourself from Falls

bk
June 26, 2009

“Many of life’s failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.” — Thomas A. Edison

A friend shared this in her Facebook profile a few days back and I thought I will share this with you. Something to ponder on over the weekend. Actually it came at the right time when I was thinking of posting something on failure.

I believe that most of us had suffered failures at several points in our lives; although we may not remember all of them. Do You Remember How You Learned to Walk?

Even before you were trying to learn and walk, didn’t you fall down on your bum first? And for me, the first time when I was learning to swim, I almost drowned. Did you almost drown too? The first bicycle ride, I had bad bruises on my knees. Did you have bruises from bicycle ride too?

Something from the Dark Knight, “Why do we fall, Bruce? So we can learn to pick ourselves up.” Such simple and straightforward truth. More often than not, we have made things complicated through our thoughts and analysis. Should we have just learnt from our lessons and moved on. Do we allow ourselves to fall and then not picking ourselves up?

Thomas Alva Edison did not learn to talk until he was almost four years old and in school, his mind often wandered, and his teacher, the Reverend Engle, was overheard calling him “addled.” And that was the end of official schooling for him.

And yet he went on to become an American inventor, scientist and businessman who developed many devices that greatly influenced life around the world. Edison is considered one of the most prolific inventors in history, holding 1,093 U.S. patents in his name, as well as many patents in the United Kingdom, France and Germany (Wikipedia).

Michael Jordan was cut from the varsity team because he was deemed too short to play at that level. He said, “I’ve missed more than 9000 shots in my career. I’ve lost almost 300 games. Twenty-six times I’ve been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.”

Did we just miss how many times Thomas Edison and Michael Jordan had fallen before they raised to greatness? I used to think that they shot to success until I realized how many times they had picked themselves up every time they fell down. As the saying goes, “the greatest glory is not in never falling but picking ourselves up every time we fall.”

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31 thoughts on “Picking Up Yourself from Falls”

    1. Symphony of Love Post author

      @ Reg Fife, thank you for pointing some of the facts about Abraham Lincoln out. Pardon me that I did not verify about the points mentioned in the video. I just did a Google about Abraham Lincoln and Wikipedia goes in line with the link you provided. It is interesting how some simply ‘distorted’ the fact and added colors to them. Although their motive to inspire others is good, to distort it is another issue. Nonetheless, Abraham Lincoln is definitely one of the greatest American Presidents. Thank you once again for taking the time to point them out. Have a great weekend. Anyone interested to find out more about Abraham Lincoln can also check out Wikipedia.

  5. Tellie

    Awesome video!! It’s always hard to fall short of a goal, but one has to realize that:
    “Making your mark on the world is hard. If it were easy, everybody would do it. But it’s not. It takes patience, it takes commitment, and it comes with plenty of failure along the way. The real test is not whether you avoid this failure, because you won’t. it’s whether you let it harden or shame you into inaction, or whether you learn from it; whether you choose to persevere.”
    – Barack Obama
    .-= Tellie´s last blog ..A Taste of Chicago =-.

  6. Symphony of Love Post author

    @ Tellie, thank you for sharing the quotation from Barack Obama. Indeed, the important is how we choose to react from the failures that we faced.

  16. Tammy

    I tried sending the info but it says, failed permanently raw…

    [email protected] <<<< this is the address?

    Anyway, dito na lang pwede ?

    Title: Anything Under The Sun
    Description: It is all about my passion to music, cooking, fine dining, travel and leisure, kids, women and anything under the sun.

    Url:
    http://www.djtammy.com/

    1. Symphony of Love Post author

      @ Chinaren, is that really what life is all about? That I don’t know. But to me, life is definitely not just about taking over next territory. Perhaps to you, that is what life is about. And there is nothing wrong for the chimpanzees in the wild to act that way; it is survival for the fittest. Darwin’s theory mentioned something about survival of the fittest and natural selection too.

  22. Ben

    Totally. Thomas Edison is one of my models that I try and emulate. His perseverance was amazing. Really good video by the way. In a way it’s kind of depressing though. If even great talents like The Beatles and Michael Jordan didn’t have immediate success, what does that say for the rest of us who probably only have mediocre talent 🙂
    .-= Ben´s last blog ..More Thoughts on Life From the Mountainside =-.

    1. Symphony of Love Post author

      @ Ben, perhaps it can be depressing. Mediocre talent or not, Michael Jordan didn’t become the way he is without a lot of hard work. It means that if we work hard … one day we can be really good in what we do too. As Samuel Johnson said, “What we hope ever to do with ease, we must learn first to do with diligence.“