How to Reframe Failure for Success

How Thomas Edison Found Beauty in Failure

Author

Brian Zhang
June 11, 2024

I’ve been in the music industry for over ten years, and I’ve come to realize that failure happens not just on a daily basis, but on an hourly basis.

When I think about it, I can count the number of genuine “successes” I’ve had on both hands. If I were to list all the moments I’ve failed, big and small, I’d need more than an encyclopedia just to reach the cliff notes of my journey through failure.

Failure is one of the biggest topics being talked about in this generation, yet it is an inevitable part of life in all areas — whether in business, entrepreneurship, school, sports, or love. To remove failure from life would be like removing your arms, legs, and the very air you breathe.

Why Do We Fear Failure?

Despite more and more high-profile figures and successful entrepreneurs speaking about the importance of embracing failure to achieve success, why are we still seeing people, particularly young adults and children, feeling the pressure of high achievement more than ever?

Why are parents still pushing their children to never make mistakes and strive for perfection?

The most obvious reason is that talking about failure, historically, has been unglamorous, unsexy, and often framed as a sign of weakness and giving up. Even though I can point to the thousands of mistakes I make weekly, I’ve also fallen into this societal trap. Whenever I talk to parents, my students, my colleagues, and fellow musicians, I traditionally highlight the milestones and achievements I’ve attained in my life so far.

The Reality of My Journey As a Musician and Entrepreneur

As a musician, no one wants to hear about the 10,000 hours I put into practising my instrument, most of which was done in my bedroom in darkness because I forgot to switch on the light when sunset came.

No one wants to hear about the 99 people who rejected me when I sent them an email offering my services. People only want to see the end result in the form of a three-minute melody that helps them escape from the stressors of life, and the one person who wanted to find out more about what I do and accepted my offer.

It’s funny how we talk about the process and the journey being more important than the end result, yet, in my opinion, even these talks have fallen flat, given how little and boring people actually make out the process to be. On one hand, we can point to logic to justify how vital it is to trust the process and improve little by little, rather than going in all guns blazing.

But the truth is, we are emotional beings, and I’m here to tell you, that when I used to tell people how teaching guitar is 99% trying to get my students to curl their fingers at the right angles, they became more interested in watching grass grow than listening to me.

How to Reframe Failure In A Positive Light: The Thomas Edison Example

This got me thinking about one of my favourite quotes from a famous inventor you might have heard of, Thomas Edison.

When Thomas Edison was asked about the strenuous process of inventing the light bulb, his answer would forever live in folklore:

Edison once said, “I have not failed 10,000 times — I’ve successfully found 10,000 ways that will not work.”

P.S. The actual quote from Thomas Edison was, “I speak without exaggeration when I say that I have constructed three thousand different theories in connection with the electric light, each one of them reasonable and apparently to be true. Yet only in two cases did my experiments prove the truth of my theory.” — Thomas A. Edison Papers of Rutgers University

When a friend told me of this legendary quote, it got me thinking about how, even in my greatest failures, there is always a story to tell and a lesson to be learned. Even the actual quote from Thomas Edison is something to behold as he dives into the intricacies and finer details of when he invented the light bulb. To Edison, the long journey to creating the light bulb was like walking through a cosmos of stars, lights, and planets, where he would absorb energies, electricity, and atoms that would help form the nucleus of his ultimate invention.

If I put it in a more modern context, I thought of the beautiful line from Pam Beesly in The Office finale, where she said:

“There’s a lot of beauty in ordinary things, isn’t that what life is all about?”

How to Find the Beauty in Failure

For Thomas Edison, his life wasn’t defined by the inventions and results he produced.

His life was defined by his desire to create the next best thing and the journey it would take him on. This defined the way he saw life as a whole, even in the darkest of times, most notably when his factory was burnt to smithereens beyond recognition.

Edison’s son, Charles, writes about the event in his book titled The Electric Thomas Edison:

“One December evening the cry of ‘Fire!’ echoed through the plant. Spontaneous combustion had broken out in the film room. Within moments all the packing compounds, celluloid for records, film, and other flammable goods had gone up with a whoosh…

When I couldn’t find Father, I became concerned. Was he safe? With all his assets going up in smoke, would his spirit be broken? He was 67, no age to begin anew. Then I saw him in the plant yard, running toward me. ‘Where’s Mom!’ he shouted. “Go get her! Tell her to get her friends! They’ll never see a fire like this again!’”

For most people, a moment with half the catastrophic nature of this would’ve sent them into a spiral of depression and insanity.

But Thomas Edison was not your typical man, and for him, he didn’t see this moment as 67 years of his life’s work, blood, sweat, and tears being blown into oblivion. No, he saw this moment as a chance to rebuild and begin the next chapter of his remarkable life, to build his next creation.

My friend told me about this quote back in 2019, and like Thomas Edison turning on the light bulb for the first time in 1879, a whole new perspective was turned on in my mind.

Until then, the only thing I chased was the glory of success and the fairytale endings in my trials and tribulations. Even if I was miles off the pace and nowhere near achieving my goals, all I talked about was how great things would be when I got there in the end.

The most notable moment in my life I did this was when I opened up my first business in 2022. For over six years, all I would tell my friends and family was how great my school would be, the community it would build for young kids and families, being united by the thread of music.

If I had my time back again, I would’ve shared more intimate details about the thousands of lessons I taught before opening up my school.

How in a week, I’d teach 40 students, in a year I’d teach over 1500 lessons, and about 1400 would be considered “boring” and “unexciting.”

  • I would’ve talked about the tiny little smiles from my young students, that would last no more than a millisecond, but encapsulated my student’s souls growing inside, as they achieved a small moment of success, realizing they were improving.

  • I would’ve talked about the times I had to try and get through my toughest days where I had to quickly regather myself after a panic attack, and my most shy of students would see right through and ask me if I was okay, and send me a small video message to say thank you for teaching him.

  • I would’ve talked about how my school’s success wouldn’t be defined by the numbers, profits, or social media followers, but by the number of texts the parents of my students send me, thanking my tutors and me for giving their students the confidence to be themselves and the belief they can chase their dreams in life.

Ultimately, I would’ve told them the 14 months my first business lasted were some of the most stressful times of my life, like an action movie that just never stopped.

Every day was at break-neck speed, and for every positive milestone, there were 1000 moments of utter chaos, such as the three days my studio lost power, so the classes were performed in candlelight darkness and freezing cold temperatures with no heat in the middle of a Sydney winter.

(Pretty romantic if you ask me, actually. Somehow we got through that, and that’s the triumph in my eyes)

I would’ve changed the way I talked about my journey to being accepted into the Sydney Conservatorium of Music in 2021.

  • Instead of talking about how enlightening my experience was, I would’ve told the story of how I spent $2000 in private lessons for two hours, only to fail at my first three auditions in 2019 and 2020.

  • Instead of talking about how exciting it was to be in an environment of like-minded musicians, I would’ve found a way to tell the story of how I was only on campus for eight weeks, and for the other 13 months, I was stuck in my one-bedroom apartment during the COVID lockdown months, before ultimately deciding to withdraw from my degree.

And like Edison, instead of saying I failed, I would’ve said:

“I didn’t fail at achieving my dream of running a music school. I learned 1000 different ways not to run a business. I learned how to find a way to get through even the toughest of days. I learned that it’s okay to have your dreams not be what you hoped for. Because when one dream ends, the next one begins, and for every chance of it being just as disappointing, there is every chance of it being the most beautiful thing I’ll ever experience.”

Reflections on Failure

I’ll finish by leaving you with this: You don’t have to necessarily chase the heights of great inventors in history such as Thomas Edison or modern-day greats like Elon Musk.

But here’s the irony — none of these people ever set out to change the world from the beginning. All they did was have a vision, a dream, curiosity, and the desire to discover things about the world and themselves. Failure wasn’t something they measured based on the outcomes of their creations, and it wasn’t something they defined their being by. They viewed failure as a necessary part of growing, learning, and discovering where every moment had a lesson to take, no matter how big or small, how life-changing or innocuous.

If success is the fruit the tree bears, then failure is the soil and roots holding the tree together.

Which of those two would you say is the longer lasting?

I’m pretty sure of my answer.

I hope you enjoyed this read, and if you made it to the end, I appreciate you taking 8 minutes of your day to read this.

If you’re someone who has struggled to embrace failure, then I’d love to help you out.

I’m on LinkedIn and X so please don’t hesitate to send me a message!


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