• Change the way you think about failure. Challenge and adversity are the best teachers you will ever have in life. Instead of getting upset when things don’t go your way, become curious about what happened and why, then try again, but this time do it better!

• Forget about things like genius or innate talent. They’re nice to have, but the people who get ahead are simply those who are willing to work hard and do it consistently.

• Adopt a growth mindset and constantly turn your attention, not to what is going wrong, but to the infinite world of the possible. There is a way out of your current predicament – how are you going to get from here to there?

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Peter Hollins is a bestselling author, human psychology researcher, and a dedicated student of the human condition. Visit https://bit.ly/peterhollins to pick up your FREE human nature cheat sheet: 7 surprising psychology studies that will change the way you think.

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From the mists of antiquity to a more recent and probably more familiar story, we now explore the great Thomas Edison, who can certainly teach us about resilience, discipline, and finishing what you start. Most of us are at least somewhat acquainted with the story of Edison and his unfathomable determination – i.e., “I haven’t failed, I have just found 10,000 ways that don’t work.”

It may not seem like it at first, but Edison shares quite a few characteristics with the other people on our list. Like Ernest Shackleton, he was not a man to cave in and give up; like Beethoven, he was flexible and committed to doing the work he knew in his heart was most valuable; and like Thomas Carlyle, he was not afraid of starting again.

This [the research] had been going on more than five months, seven days a week, when I was called down to the laboratory to see him [Edison]. I found him at a bench about three feet wide and twelve feet long, on which there were hundreds of little test cells that had been made up by his corps of chemists and experimenters. I then learned that he had thus made over nine thousand experiments in trying to devise this new type of storage battery, but had not produced a single thing that promised to solve the question. In view of this immense amount of thought and labor, my sympathy got the better of my judgment, and I said: 'Isn't it a shame that with the tremendous amount of work you have done you haven't been able to get any results?' Edison turned on me like a flash, and with a smile replied: 'Results! Why, man, I have gotten lots of results! I know several thousand things that won't work!'

In science, the goal is not lofty or ego-based – you simply wish to know, to uncover, to discover, to illuminate your own understanding. Then, you employ the meta-tool called the scientific method, which allows you to proceed in a series of strategic steps on your path towards knowledge. You form hypotheses, you design experiments to test it, you observe and analyze your results, come to conclusions, then try again.

On this path, there is no success or failure, per se. If you set out to see if a hypothesis is true, and you discover that it is not, then you haven’t “failed” to prove it – you have simply discovered its untruth. The accomplishment, if it can be called that, is not smaller than if you had discovered your hypothesis was true. Thus, trial and error is not adversity, obstacle, or difficulty. It is simply the path – the only path – that we take to arrive at knowledge.

Certain people are capable of extraordinary resilience, achievement, and discipline, not because they never encountered difficulties, but because of the way they framed those difficulties. Long before life coaches and self-help gurus were talking about the power of mindset, these leaders, inventors, and strategists were showing that success really does start in the mind.

Today, psychologist Carol Dweck’s model of a “growth mindset” gives us a framework to understand these ultra-successful people and the perspectives that informed their greatness. For Dweck, everyone in life will experience setbacks, hardships, disappointments, losses or failures. No question. However, there are two very different ways to respond to them, and they each come down to the person’s conception of themselves.

With a growth mindset, you see yourself as capable of growth and change, which means that you understand that achievement is a process. Accordingly, you embrace challenge and difficulty because you know it’s the very thing that allows you to learn and improve. You put in the effort and you keep going despite difficulties – because difficulties are merely seen as temporary.

With a fixed mindset, however, you see your characteristics (discipline, intelligence, strength) as fixed – either you’re born with them or you’re not. This means that effort doesn’t change anything, and you might as well do what you can to avoid challenge, since it’s not possible to learn from it. You’ll give up at the first impediment and quietly resent others for their success, instead of being inspired by it.

If your perspective is built on growth, then you’re able to think, “I don’t know how to do this yet, but I’ll figure it out.” From a fixed mindset, you simply conclude. “I don’t know how to do this. It can’t be done… ever.” Can you see how all the people we’ve covered so far have demonstrated, in their own way, a powerful growth mindset?

Again, it’s almost as though the word “resilience” is not quite right. It implies that we are out there in the world, facing the onslaught of attacks, setbacks, painful losses and so on, continually raining down on us. “Resilience” is then how good we are at tolerating it all without complaining! But the people who are really resilient don’t actually hold this view. They don’t see setbacks, failures, or disappointments in the same way. If something doesn’t work, they don’t frame it as a tragedy. They just note that it doesn’t work. This immediately frees them up to do something important: figure out what does work.

Rather than seeing things that don’t go their way as some uncomfortable hardship dished up by the universe, they remain curious and open-minded, like scientists. What does their result – any result – teach them? Failure, you see, is as important to your learning as success. If you’re a scientist, your success is only defined by your understanding. So long as you try, you have data, and that data is valuable.

With a growth mindset, you are in continual dialogue with reality, rather than passively accepting whatever you can see on first look. You ask questions, and you keep asking them. If your questions go nowhere, you ask new ones: “What are the right questions to ask here? What am I missing?” If you are not getting the results you want, you investigate the kind of tool you need to do so – sometimes, that tool is yourself. You need to ask, what kind of a person do I need to be to achieve my goal?

There are many great lessons we can learn from someone like Thomas Edison, but most of them spring from this fundamental perspective on life. Edison teaches us a subtle mindset shift: we should not strive to avoid failing, but to fail better. Can we embrace our failures and learn from them? Can we make our failures mean something?

This is its own kind of resilience. It’s not born from a sense of divine right and conviction (like Carlyle), and it doesn’t stem from a sincere passion about your life’s ultimate purpose (like Beethoven). Instead, it is something infinitely practical. It didn’t work? Try again. That’s all. Edison was reported to work sometimes 18 hours a day. He said, “Our greatest weakness lies in giving up. The most certain way to succeed is always to try just one more time.”

The next time you face an outcome that you don’t like or didn’t expect, don’t fight with it or assume that it’s all over for you – this is just more of the “fixed mindset” talking. Instead, get curious. Learn more. You will instantly find that all the things you were calling “problems” actually aren’t – it’s just life, and you are simply trying to find your way through it. Your attitude and response to failure matter more than the failure itself.

Naturally, you don’t have to be a literal scientist to cultivate this kind of mindset. And invention, hard work, and originality are not confined to any single area of life. If you think that you’re not the kind of person who belongs in the same class as Edison, think again – he was a man who struggled with his early schooling and experienced poverty growing up.

According to him, “If we did all the things we are capable of, we would literally astound ourselves.” Are you one of those people that walks around, convinced that their limitations and flaws will always hold them back, that things are bad and won’t get better? Well, look around at the world. How much of it was created by people who refused to believe that was true? Fear and self-doubt can be crippling, but if we are courageous and adventurous, who knows what we could achieve?

Almost everyone (scratch that, everyone) will occasionally reach a point in life where they feel they are at a dead end. It may not look like there are many options available to them, and they’re all but ready to throw in the towel. But think of this way: there is always something better out there… you just haven’t found it yet. The perfect lightbulb design was always there, waiting for the man who was patient and dedicated enough to travel the distance required to reach it. Whatever is bothering you right now, change your perspective by realizing that a potential solution is out there – you’re just not there yet.

One way to look at resilience is to see it as an ability to endure misfortune. But the best way to endure is paradoxically not to endure at all – get up and do something about it! If you don’t like something, change it. If your whole plan has blown up in your face, dust yourself off and make another, better plan to replace it.

It’s only human to feel overwhelmed at times or to get discouraged by endless setbacks and problems. But try to remember that there are also endless possibilities. If you think you’ve tried everything – well, you haven’t! Look again. Realize that dwelling on problems doesn’t make them go away, but taking action brings you one step closer to something better.

Real life example

Have you ever heard of Traf-O-data? Probably not. But you have heard of the man who created it – Bill Gates. Traf-O-Data was just one of Gates’s many flops and failures on his path to where he is now. Likewise, the “Apple Lisa” was a necessary failure along Steve Jobs’ path to success, and Walt Disney’s idea for Mickey Mouse was originally rejected by MGM because the studio felt that women would be afraid of mice. Failure is normal! These people had two main things in common: they all failed before they succeeded, and they all worked really, really hard to get to that success.