Thomas Alva Edison was born as the seventh son of Samuel, a political exile from Canada and his wife Nancy. After just 12 weeks in school, Edison who was hyperactive and prone to distractions was classified a “difficult child “and expelled. His mother, an accomplished school teacher, then started teaching him at home. In a short time he developed a voracious appetite for reading and self-study that he went on to use to great advantage in his later years. He also developed a hearing disability at a very young age being completely deaf in one ear and barely hearing in the other.
The starting point of his career was as a train boy on the Grand Trunk Railroad selling vegetables, candy and newspapers. He then went on into many entrepreneurial ventures, founding fourteen companies, the best known being, the global conglomerate “General Electric”. With 1093 US patents and many in other countries to his credit, his inventions have an unprecedented impact on the modern industrialized world. Nicknamed “the Wizard of Menlo Park”, Thomas Alva Edison ended up as one of the greatest inventors and business men who ever walked the face of planet earth.
Edison who said “Genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration,” conducted six thousand experiments to perfect his best known invention, the electric bulb. When asked how he overcame one failed experiment after the other this indomitable inventor answered saying “I have not failed, I have just found 5999 ways that do not work”
Rejection, the lack of formal education, impoverished circumstances, handicaps, mistakes, failures…these don’t seem to the ingredients of success on the face of it. But Edison’s biography is an inspiring message that says “Don’t let them stop you, keep going”. Edison himself is quoted to have said “Many of life’s failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up”.
Let me pose this question to you now – “What are you going through now?”
Do you feel like you have been denied the opportunities that many normally get? Are you hindered by a handicap you have no control over? Has failure after failure in what you do demoralized you? Do you think it’s time to throw in the towel and quit…and be one amongst the millions of nobody’s that the world calls “Ordinary”?
Well… the very purpose of my writing is to let you know that “It need not be so”. Your “Extraordinary” creator made you in His likeness and image and therefore “ordinary” is to be abnormal and “Extraordinary” should be your normal.
“But how”? – might be your question
Here’s my answer…
You can change your situation if you change the way you view it.
What you were denied is what you didn’t need. Don’t look at what you don’t have and get depressed, but think of what you can do with the resources and opportunities you do have. When you think you have run out of opportunities, remember there is always another for the one who looks for it. Edison was denied a formal education but he had a voracious appetite to learn. He discovered he could still learn when he explored his options and found his answer in books.
Your handicap becomes a hindrance on the road to the extraordinary only if you let it. If you look at it from a different perspective the same handicap that stops you from doing what you want to might be what directs you to doing what your Creator made you for.
Franklin Delano Roosevelt contracted polio while drinking water at a campground and became paralyzed from the waist down. He became President of the United States and was a wheelchair user for the entire time he was in office. Having helped guide the nation through
World War II, he proved that his handicap was not a roadblock on the journey to the extraordinary. Marlee Matlin, Academy Award and Golden Globe winning actress for her role in the 1986 movie “Children of a lesser God” was deaf. Blind because of his premature birth, Stevie Wonder is one of the world’s most beloved “musician, singer, songwriter” of today with more than thirty US top ten hits. Helen Keller, famed women and labor rights activist was the first blind and deaf person to earn a college degree in America. Nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 2012, Lenin Moreno, 46th President of Ecuador, was shot during a 1998 robbery attempt and has used a wheelchair ever since. Sudha Chandran of India, Bharatnatyam dancer and Bollywood actress accomplished what she did after losing her leg to infection after a car accident in 1981. The lives of these people testify to one truth – Your disability need not become an inability to achieve the extraordinary
The only people who have never fallen are those that have never walked. The only ones that have never made mistakes are they that have never tried. If you have tried…to accomplish something…mistakes are a surety that will come your way.
The “Ordinary” person makes the mistake of thinking that “mistakes” are unconquerable obstacles in the journey to the extraordinary. The truth is far from it. Mistakes remain mistakes only until you correct them. They are mistakes only when you don’t learn from them. If an uncorrectable mistake happens that threatens to block your journey forward, it remains a roadblock only until you find another way.
Involvement with an organization that goes under might seem like a mistake on the face of it. But it can teach you many things about business and the decisions that affect its longevity. Working under a bad boss can teach you much about how you should and should not be as you move up the ladder. Losing money on a bad investment can teach careful evaluation and lead you to great success later. Not keeping records of the boss’s instructions, activity reports, accounts, and the like can be a costly mistake to make at times. Such have the potential to get you disciplined enough to do so from that point on. Entrepreneurial ventures that fail offer great lessons in business planning, costing or budgeting, unidentified or unmonitored risk, maintenance of relationships with customers and suppliers, and the like. For those willing to learn and improve, lessons lie even amongst broken relationships. To quote Edison one more time “There is a way to do it better. Find it ”.
Moses – one of history’s greatest leaders was born in the house of a slave in Egypt. The education and training that he needed to become what his Maker wanted him to be wasn’t available in these circumstances. God arranged circumstances and brought in relationships that would provide for all of that. Acts 7:22 says “And Moses was learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians, and was mighty in words and in deeds.”
At forty years of age Moses made the mistake of letting his anger get out of control and ended up murdering an Egyptian. This mistake made it necessary for him to live in the wilderness for the next forty years of his life. People who get into trouble often know that, the reason for what they are going through today, is the mistake they made in their yesterday. They would do anything to go back into that yesterday and rewrite that act or event. But they also know that this time travel into yesterday is just not possible and this makes many lose hope. It is here that the message of Psalm 18:32 strengthens us. The verse says “It is God that girdeth me with strength, and maketh my way perfect.”. It states that God can move into our yesterdays and rewrite things whereby our imperfect ways of yesterday become perfect and its results will become good today and will get better as the days go on. In the wilderness, Moses realized his mistake, got right with God and submitted to His will. God used him mightily to deliver the Israelites from bondage in Egypt.
Yes, Moses learned the lesson the mistake offered and did what was necessary to get God to repair the situation. But he failed to put the lesson into practice in daily life. He repeated the same mistake again at Rephidim (Numbers 20). God did not let him enter into the promised land for letting his anger get the better of him again. We need to understand that it wasn’t his “stutter” but his repetition of the same mistake that cost him the Promised Land.
(From the book “THE PURSUIT OF EXTRAORDINARY” by Yohan Philip)
“The undesirable experiences of the past that motivates you to reach for the Extraordinary and teaches you how to build your desired future holds no cause for regret”
YOHAN PHILIP
Yohan Philip (The pursuit of extraordinary)
FREEDOM MENTORNET 