Even the brightest minds have setbacks!

We all want to be successful but many of us find the path to achieving our dreams is blocked by our fear of failure. Whether you’re trying to lose weight, go backpacking around the world or start up a new business, you need to accept that you might fail many times over before you achieve success.

If you’re worried about taking a risk or trying something new, don't let anxiety about setbacks put you off. One thing many of life’s winners have in common is that have all failed at some stage - some of them quite massively! What allowed them to succeed in the end is that they had the perseverance and determination to bounce back from their failures and go on to achieve their goals. Let’s take a look at the setbacks some of these great minds have experienced:

1. Albert Einstein

The word Einstein is now synonymous with enormous intelligence, yet one of the greatest geniuses of all time was unable to speak fluently before the age of 9. He was a disruptive and difficult pupil who was expelled from school. Einstein eventually graduated from the Zurich Polytechnic but then struggled to find employment, working at several different casual jobs. At one stage he considered becoming an insurance salesman!

Perhaps saddest of all, his father died still believing his son was a failure. However, Einstein never gave up. He eventually took a job as a patents clerk, a role which involved a lot of maths, and this enabled him to pursue his passion for equations - the rest is history! 

In 1921, he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics for his Theory of Relativity. His patience, perseverance and resilience led to his becoming one of the most iconic scientific figures of all time. If like Einstein, your child is finding it hard to concentrate at school, Bach Flowers Mix 55 can help to calm them and reduce their distraction.

2. Dr Edward Bach

After qualifying as a doctor in 1912, Dr Bach became a house surgeon at University College Hospital in London and also practised privately in Harley Street. While working on the wards during the First World War, he collapsed with a haemorrhage and was found to have a tumour. After an operation to remove it, physicians gave him just months to live. However, he was not a person to give up easily and returned to his work, determined to get as much done as possible in the time left to him.

As the three months came and went, he found himself feeling stronger than ever and became convinced that it was his perseverance and will to live that had overcome the disease. He took an increasingly holistic view of medicine and by the 1930s had developed his range of flower essences. 

Dr Bach believed that by taking the individual personalities of his patients into account, the body’s own healing processes would be unblocked and any symptoms would be alleviated. One of his best-loved treatments is the Bach Rescue Remedy, aimed at reducing stress and fear in any situation and now reformulated as Bach First Aid Remedy.

3. Milton Hershey

America’s most famous confectioner had a rocky road to follow before achieving success, with failure after failure along the way. He was apprenticed to a printer but was dismissed from this role. After his first candy company went bust, his aunt helped him out with a loan to buy caramel making equipment.

His friends and family thought he was crazy, but while his Lancaster Caramel Company came close to failing twice, he eventually sold it in 1900 for $1m - an astronomical sum at the time.

In those days, chocolate was an expensive and exclusive sweet. After seeing a demo of the latest machinery at a trade fair, he hit on a plan to make chocolate bars affordable for everyone, at a step that set him firmly on the path to even greater successes.

4. Thomas Edison

As a boy, Thomas Edison was not notable for his academic brilliance- in fact, two of his teachers described him as stupid! He was fired by two employers before becoming America’s greatest inventor. He invented the phonograph, the motion picture camera and, of course, the light bulb.

Edison trialled thousands of electric light bulbs before coming up with a design that worked well. He famously said ” I’ve not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that don't work”!

5. J. K. Rowling

One of the most successful authors of all time, J. K. Rowling didn’t find success easily. She had always wanted to be a writer but life intervened. Her mother’s death tipped her into a deep depression and her first marriage failed, leaving her as a single mum with a young daughter to support. Feeling herself to be at rock bottom, her determination awoke and she completed the book she had started writing years earlier, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone.

She sent her manuscript to publisher after publisher but no one seemed interested. She didn’t give up and on the twelfth attempt, the story captivated the young daughter of an editor at Bloomsbury. Now one of the world’s wealthiest women, J. K. Rowling says that it’s impossible to live without ever failing at anything and that if you live your life without taking any risks, you are failing by default.

If you find yourself becoming dejected after a setback, Bach Flowers Mix 65 will support your emotions and help to restore your self-confidence.

Don't let anxieties about failing stop you from starting afresh and taking a different path. As the old saying has it, if at first, you don't succeed, try, try and try again, and you’ll win through in the end.