Positive Leadership Principles for Women by Karol Ladd

Author:Karol Ladd
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780736950145
Publisher: Harvest House Publishers

Chapter Five

Learn from Your Mistakes

Making the Best out of Your Worst

Praise the LORD, my soul,

and forget not all his benefits—

…who redeems your life from the pit

and crowns you with love and compassion.

PSALM 103:2,4

We should consider it pure joy when faced

with temptations of many kinds because God can use

those very experiences to purify us.

Do you believe there is anything Satan

devises that can outwit God?

JENNIFER KENNEDY DEAN

When we walk in a room and switch on a light, we can be thankful for an unlikely genius named Thomas Alva Edison. Moving pictures and audio recordings are also a result of this one man’s perseverance. Few people expected young Thomas to amount to anything at all. But…he had a mother who looked past his shortcomings and saw his potential. He spoke with affection about her: “My mother was the making of me. She was so true, so sure of me; and I felt I had something to live for, someone I must not disappoint.”

Thomas was a curious boy and his mother, Nancy, had every reason to be discouraged about his actions. He burned down the family stable and was kicked out of school, yet his mother, a devout Presbyterian with a formal education, was able to put her education to good use by teaching “young Al.” Thomas was an ambitious entrepreneur and started a small business selling newspapers on a local train, but he lost his job because he nearly blew up one of the train cars with his science experiments. His life was marked by many other failures and mishaps as well, but oddly that’s not what we remember about him. We remember him for his successes. Aren’t you thankful for the influence and leadership of his mother, who taught him to look at each failure as an opportunity to learn and grow and discover new things?

Edison had a unique drive and perseverance that kept him learning and growing despite his mistakes. He didn’t allow discouragements to linger; rather he pushed forward with curiosity and commitment. On the fiftieth anniversary of the invention of the electric lightbulb, Henry Ford organized a celebration of his dear friend Edison. President Herbert Hoover spoke about the variety of ways that the electric light had made life better: “It enables our towns and cities to clothe themselves in gaiety by night, no matter how sad their appearance may be by day. And by all its multiple uses it has lengthened the hours of our active lives, decreased our fears, replaced the dark with good cheer, increased our safety, decreased our toil, and enabled us to read the type in the telephone book.”1

The lightbulb represents countless hours in the laboratory filled with failed experiments and frustrations. When asked by a reporter with the New York Times about the seemingly incredible difficulties associated with developing his device, Edison responded, “I have not failed 700 times. I’ve succeeded in proving 700 ways how not to build a light bulb.” What an extraordinary perspective! Can we look at our mistakes as

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