"I never did anything by accident,
nor did any of my inventions
come indirectly through accident. . ."
-- Thomas A Edison
"One may walk over the highest mountain
one step at a time."
-- John Wanamaker
This is one of my favorite quotes by the great inventor, Thomas A Edison, wherein he states clearly that none of his inventions came by accident. No, they were all on purpose.
I've read about Edison and how many failures he had in inventing the electric light bulb--over 1,000 as I recall, then magically, the next one worked. It's easy to think it was just a fluke, but the reality is that he set out to accomplish something and focused on it and tried everything he could think of until he finally succeeded.
Achieving something by accident would be more like focusing on creating a telephone, then, all of a sudden an electric oven appeared instead. Or, more likely it is focusing on making one thing and ending up making something else, as in how Play Dough came about, or Post-It Notes, Shaklee Basic-H, and such. You set out to create something, fail at it and find that what you did create has a use after all.
Back to Edison--it seems to me a wonderful strategy, from everything that I have learned about him, to make a decision and a goal and start moving toward it with conviction, and the rest will play out pretty well with the follow-through.
Just Think How Many Things We Would Accomplish If We Used The Same Strategy Consistently!
Spread Some Joy Today--When someone around you is complaining, be bold and break their state by changing the subject. Uplift a friend!
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