It is oft-stated that Thomas Edison once said, “I did not fail 10,000 times when creating the light-bulb; I have succeeded in finding 10,000 ways how not to create a light-bulb.” I have read it many times and I find that the number seems quite arbitrary and he was not the first person to create the light-bulb, merely the innovator who found a more viable filament source in tungsten steel. This article is not about him but, about allowing oneself to take risks in life and allowing failure.

I was watching Seth Godin on TED and, he was talking about how to market to the world by not focusing on the masses, but risking your gains on the people who actually give a damn about what you are selling.  “The riskiest thing you can do now is being safe.” You are going to have to take your risks to stand out among the ever growing crowd. Develop your product and sell it not to a crowd but to the few who care about your work. Let the few spread your product, all you have to do is find them and give them what they want.

Man is capable of perceiving risk and finding ways to manage it, however, the simplest way that man knows is to remove it all together. This is quite risky in itself as with higher risk comes higher failure rates but, also, larger success. We should not see these failures as losses but as knowledgeable gains for our future successes. When you truly develop an understanding of the risk you are taking it is no longer a gamble; you have developed a strategy to turn most fortunes, good or bad, into positive successes.

“The time you have is short, better to fail today and have tomorrow left to succeed; you will never know if your failure now will lead to a future success.”