The light bulb is perhaps one of the greatest inventions of the last 150 years, yet such invention had not been possible if Thomas Edison would have given up after 999 fails. While Mr. Thomas persistence is remarkable the most remarkable part is his willingness to succeed. When he was asked how it felt to fail so many times, Mr. Edison answered “I didn’t fail 999 times, the light bulb was a 1000 steps invention” Mr. Edison knew each time he failed, he was getting closer to the invention he wanted to achieve.

Persistence is an important part of success but is more important to make sure we are on the right path. As Albert Einstein once said “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expect different results” we have to make sure we are not just going because we want to be going. As we are faced with adversity, we must not give up and we must stay focus on our goals and on what we are trying to achieve, but we also must reassess what we are doing and why we are not achieving our goals. Is not enough to continue on our path, we must find out what can we do better.

We should never take the easy way out, but that does not mean we have to make our lives more complicated or that must continue in our path simply because that is what we want to do, here are four simple steps that we can do to analyzed if our efforts are worth it:

• Why are we doing what we are doing? If we know why we are doing what we are doing, then we can assess to see if is worth the effort.
• Why did we fail? If we can pinpoint the source of our failures, we can correct it.
• What can we do to improve? Once we have identified the source of our failure, we can focus on correcting those mistakes
• Keep our goals in mind. Only by continuing to keep our goals in mind we can stay focus on continuing when difficulties arise.

“When the going gets though the though gets going” it is important that we know we are on the right path so we can continue to get going thru the difficult situations. Today I am challenging you to look back at something your tried and failed, and follow those four steps above, then reconsider if it was worth it or if you just were not though enough to follow the highest road.

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