When Life Hands You Lemons..

              

          Dan Edelman was a very successful man. Very successful may even be an understatement in his case. He was a pioneer and someone who grabbed the bull by the horns. He is not a man that you would necessarily associate with failure. However, in the first chapters of the book, we gain insight into Edelman’s hard times and even failure

       In the first chapters we get a sense of the incredible Edelman as a young man. I mean he graduated High School at 15! (Sorry Pr. Culp for the exclamation, but I feel it’s warranted) He started College at the young age of 16. During Edelman’s college years, he was President of his Fraternity, Tutored, and managed to graduate with Honors. He then went on to have a career as a Public Relations Specialist with the Army. If all of this wasn’t enough, Edelman went on to be a Pioneer in Public relations, and started one of the most successful PR Agencies.

        I know what you’re thinking, “How does this in any ways have to do with failure, he seemed like a very successful man.?” While the above statement is true, Edelman worked extremely hard for his success. He was a person that knew what it was like to fail. He was a man that took lemons and made lemonade. Edelman suffered a profound loss when his sister Ruth died at a young age. He could have used the loss of his sister as an excuse to do the bare minimum. Instead he decided to excel both academically and in life, in Ruth’s memory. Edelman was even fired, a fact that I found hard to believe. However he didn’t let this get him down, instead he got motivated. Edelman didn’t go stand in the unemployment line, instead he started his company.

        The point that trying to make is, Edelman is very inspiring, because he achieved all of his success through hard work. There was no real luck in his career, just work. He didn’t let failure veer him of his path instead he embraced failure. He took the lessons from his failed attempts and used them to excel. It’s an unfortunate given we will have some failures in our lifetimes. However we can all think of Edelman and embrace our failure. In the end, failure is not a bad thing, it’s just a lesson learned.