Going Back In Time

Hello All –

Going Back In Time…

If I were able to travel back in time to any time in the past, I would go to the time when Thomas Edison was working on his light bulb. I would go to this point in history, because I would want to witness the evolution of his thought process as he tackled the MANY different ways that he came up with to try to get a functioning bulb. I’d like to see how he decided upon the different ways to get the bulb to work.

How did he decide which wire or filament to try, and how to make the connections? What prompted his choices? I wonder if he shared his decisions or choices with anyone before he actually made the attempt. If he did, with whom?

What was the mood in the lab as the experiments were conducted? And, most importantly, how did Edison handle all the failures that he and his team experienced before the success?

I would like to ask Edison these questions so that I could get an insight into his creative problem solving. I think it would be a great experience to get this information directly from the “horse’s mouth”, as it was evolving. What an education that would be!

I don’t think that I would try to influence any of these happenings as they were evolving, but I wonder if I’d be able to offer any suggestions to help him. For that matter, I wonder if he would be open to any suggestions from anyone.

Trying to influence the events as they occurred would be counter-productive, as any changes to those events might make subsequent events happen in very different ways.

And who’s to say if that would be better or worse?

I would like to take what I would learn from Edison, and apply it to my journey here on WA, and getting my online business up, and running successfully. I think he would impart a big dose of “can do” attitude, and inspire me to keep trying to get things going until I succeeded. Then it would encourage me to keep working to refine and hone the operation for incremental improvements.

Making notes of failures as I progressed, and documenting the lessons learned, I would try to apply my new-found knowledge to avoid similar pitfalls going forward. I would also look for ways to apply those lessons to other aspects of my life.

For me, that’s one of the true powers of knowledge, to apply it to many different facets of my life, and improve in a more comprehensive way.

After all, it’s through our trials and tribulations that we experience the most growth.

What if you could go back to any point in the past? To what time in history would you go? And why?

Do you think you would try to influence events during your visit? Why or why not?

Thanks for reading, and have a great day!