People close to me are mostly aware of my successes. But let me confess it today – I have failed miserably innumerable times in my life. I failed in my IT business, I failed in IIT exams, I failed in studies and whatnot. And when I reflect, I failed since I didn’t try sincerely.
Perhaps I failed because there was something more that was needed to bring me the success I was seeking. If you read any success stories, may it be Thomas Edison, Wright brothers, Graham Bell, Sindhutai, they all persisted for years and years until they found that ‘something’.
Many people claimed to have invented the telephone before Alexander Graham Bell. Why did the Supreme Court decide that Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone? Among those many held prior patents and Philipp Reis was the one who came close to success. Reis discovered how to reproduce musical tones, but he did no more. He could sing through his apparatus, but he could not talk. The something more Bell added was comparatively simple. He switched from intermittent to continuous current, the only type capable of reproducing human speech. The little difference that made a big difference was a single screw. Supreme court concluded – “The difference between Reis and Bell is just the difference between failure and success. If Reis had kept on he might have found a way to succeed, but he stopped and failed. Bell took up his work and carried it on to a successful result”.
So, if you are standing on the threshold of success without being able to pass over, try adding something more. It needn’t be much. The single screw was all it took to make the telephone’s invention successful.
In the words of Thomas A. Edison – Many of life’s failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave u
