In last week’s blog, I talked about positive and negative people and the impact on energy levels.

I acknowledged that it is not always easy for us to stay positive. We all have challenges to face from time to time, unexpected problems to deal with or obstacles to overcome.

When I come against barriers and adversity, I remind myself “that this too will pass” and I recall what my mum always said to us when we were children, when things did not go our way and we had a setback. She used to say “there is always somebody worse off than you and things will get better, stay positive.”

When I sat down to write this piece, Thomas Edison came into my mind. He was named as Life Magazines Number One Man of the Last Millennium. Edison patented an astounding 1,093 inventions in his lifetime. He attempted thousands of times to find the right material for his version of the incandescent light bulb; he didn’t see any of the attempts as failures. With every single attempt he just saw it as getting one step closer to a solution. He never doubted he would succeed.

“Genius”, he declared “is 99% perspiration and 1% inspiration” but there was a third factor to his success – his positive attitude.

Edison was an optimist who saw the best in everything. He once said; “If we did all the things we were capable of doing we would literally astound ourselves”. His belief could be summarised by his statement, “Many of life’s failures are people who did not realise how close they were to success when they gave up.”

Probably the most notable display of Edison’s positive attitude can be seen in the way he approached a tragedy that occurred in his late sixties. The lab he had built – a fourteen building complex, with was greater in size than three football pitches, caught fire.

Now he loved this place. It was the base of his operations, it was where he and his staff conceived inventions, developed prototypes, manufactured products and shipped them to customers. It had become a model for modern research and manufacturing. He spent every minute he could there. He often slept there on one of the lab tables.

But on that day in December, when it caught fire, he was reported as saying as he stood outside and watched it burn, “Quick kids go and get your mother – she’ll never see another fire like this one”.

Most people would have been crushed, but not Edison, he said, “I’m 67, but not too old to make a fresh start. I’ve been through a lot of things like this.” He rebuilt the lab, and he kept working for another 17 years.

This week have a think about what you can learn from the Edison story and consider if you can make a difference to someone’s life in a simple way with a little positivity.

Quote for the week:

“Attitude is a little thing that makes a big difference.” Winston Churchill.

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