“The Only Real Mistake Is the One From Which We Learn Nothing.” —Henry Ford

Henry Ford, the founder of the Ford Motor Company, once said, “The only real mistake is the one from which we learn nothing.”

The only way you really fail is if you quit. If you don't quit, all you have to do is persist… Unless you die or something. But then, it wouldn't matter.

To achieve something, you simply must try one thing, gather results, evaluate, and tweak if it didn't work.

Another key to this concept is to tweak each attempt based on results.

You can't do the same thing over and over again because nothing would change. That's why the definition of insanity is to “do the same thing over and over again expecting different results.”

And you're not insane, are you?

An example of this…

Thomas Edison is one of the most famous examples of this as the person famous for trying 10,000 different ways to create a lightbulb before finally getting it right.

Although he “failed” many times, Edison is not seen as a failure because he ultimately figured out the solution.

How did he do that?

By not quitting. By persisting and tweaking things each time until something worked.

It's literally process of elimination.

If what you are trying to do isn't impossible, success is like a multiple choice question.

There may be lots of choices, sure. But, every time you try a different method to reach your goal that doesn't work, you've eliminated one of those choices, increasing your likelihood of succeeding.

How Henry Ford practiced what he preached

Here's a quote from the book, “Think and Grow Rich” by Napoleon Hill that describes how Henry Ford reached a goal by telling his employees what he wanted and having them try different approaches until something worked:

“When Henry Ford decided to produce his famous V-8 motor, he chose to build an engine with the entire eight cylinders cast in one block, and instructed his engineers to produce a design for the engine. The design was placed on paper, but the engineers agreed, to a man, that it was simply impossible to cast an eight-cylinder engine-block in one piece.

Ford replied,”Produce it anyway.”

Another famous quote that tells the same story

If the wisdom from Henry Ford and Thomas Edison aren't enough for you, how about a quote from Tony Robbins, one of the most famous success coaches on Earth:

“There is no failure. There are only results.”

Tony Robbins

Related: Tony Robbins Quotes – His 75 Most Motivational Lines

Conclusion

You have two options:

1. Persist and tweak until you succeed.
2. Quit and accept what you already have.

Failure is not an option. Which will you choose?