It’s said that Thomas Edison performed fifty thousand experiments before he succeeded in producing a storage battery. You’d think he’d have had some serious doubts along the way. But when asked if he ever became discouraged working so long without results, Edison replied: ‘Results? Why, I know fifty thousand things that won’t work.’ Theodore Roosevelt said: ‘He who never makes a mistake never makes anything.’ But nobody summed it up better than the Apostle Paul who, talking about the disappointments of life, said: ‘We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair. We are hunted down, but God never abandons us. We are knocked down, but we get up again and keep going.’
The real winners in life are those who, like St Paul, can say: ‘Disappointed? Often! Discouraged? Sometimes! Defeated? Never!