Inspiration Bytes: Doors to success

Doors to success

Edison was conducting a new experiment in his laboratory. He had appointed a young scientist, aged 18, to assist him .To start with, the young man worked very enthusiastically, but as time passed and success eluded him, he was disappointed and developed a feeling of frustration. He lost his patience .He ultimately made up his mind that he would not waste any more time in the futile pursuit. Whenever he went to Edison to inform him of his decision , he would see a strange glow in the eyes of that old man and would therefore go back without uttering a word .Edison was going strong with his work as ever .Every day he would conduct some new experiment. When he failed in one experiment , he would take up another one .

After three months, the patience of the young man was exhausted. One day , when he did not see Edison face to face , Edison asked him to face up and go to his work. The young man however wanted to be excused on one pretext or the other. Edison persisted ,”when you are on the verge of success , you want to retract”. Expressing surprise the young man said,“Success is still far away as it was when we started work three months ago”.

Encouraging the young man, Edison said, “It appears you lack knowledge of arithmetic. We have conducted a large number of useless experiments so far .This means the number of useless experiments to be conducted now is much less. If there are 300 methods of doing a work and we have not succeeded in 200 of these, the number of remaining method is 100 only. We are near success with every passing day .What a big great fool you are! When we are so near success , you have lost heart and hope .”. Encouraged by these words of Edison , the young man took to his work whole heartedly and succeeded.