Thomas Edison was the man who singlehandedly created the modern technological age by inventing electric light, recorded sound and motion pictures. Right?
Not exactly.
In reality, Edison stumbled upon the phonograph while trying to improve the telegraph and failed to recognize its importance for a decade. A number of people developed electric light before he did. And it was one of his assistants who invented the movie camera while his boss was away trying to develop a new kind of mining equipment.
Edison was a halfway decent inventor. But his real talent was creating and spreading powerful myths about himself.
Modern biographers of Edison reveal a picture of a man far different than the larger-than-life “Wizard of Menlo Park” we all learned about in school. Throughout his life, he struggled socially—his lack of charm and gruff manner resulting in having few close friends. In short, the real reason he developed a habit of locking himself away in his lab was that couldn’t stand interacting with most other people.
For many, this quality would have killed any chance of success. But Edison understood how to spin his greatest flaw into the stuff of dreams. By doing so, he became one of the most famous people of his era.
Here’s how.
Turning Lead Into Gold
Early on in his career, when his company was doing little more than making small improvements to existing telegraph equipment, he managed to get a story placed in the press that was pivotal in turning him into a celebrity. It described a colleague who passed by the inventor’s workshop one night at midnight, saw the light still on, and found Edison asleep at his desk. When the man woke him up, Edison told him that he had better get home because he just remembered he had been married earlier that evening.
Whether or not this story was true (it probably wasn’t), it shows how relentless the inventor was about promoting his inhuman capacity for work. It kicked off his image as a lone genius that he fostered throughout his career.
For example, in the wake of the release of the phonograph prototype, an associate of his pretended to confide in a reporter that his average work day was 18 hours long. Edison installed a time clock in his laboratory and made sure the press saw the inhuman hours he clocked. And when he went on his honeymoon with his second wife, he made sure the press got word halfway through his trip that he had just developed the initial design for an automatic cotton picking machine.
The reality is that the time Edison spent locked away in his lab was not the reason for his success (not directly, anyway). Instead, it was his defense mechanism for dealing with social awkwardness. His brilliance was in recognizing this weakness and publicly reframing it as his greatest strength.
Becoming Like Edison
What Thomas Edison realized is that our weaknesses and our strengths are often one and the same. Successful self-promoters get the world to see the former as the latter.
Do you have a trait that you’ve always been self-conscious about? Do you have an eccentricity that you’ve taken pains to hide in the past? Pieces of yourself that other people think are weird or useless? Write them down. This is your raw material.
Next, for each of these quirks and foibles, think of a way you might flip it into a positive. Nestled into every one of these idiosyncratic elements is the golden nugget from which you might refashion yourself into a figure of admiration. Choose the one that seems the most intriguing—the one you can imagine other people encountering out in the world and wanting to know more about.
Once you’ve made your selection, weave it into every element of your public presentation. Embrace it, exaggerate it, and embody it in whatever forms you use to communicate to the world, whether it’s a talk attended by thousands, an online webinar watched by hundreds, or a one-on-one conversation with a colleague.
Most of us are far from flawless. But by starting with one of your greatest weaknesses and finding its sparkling underbelly, you can make yourself appear extraordinary.
To get a list of books that will teach you to become as successful as Thomas Edison, click here.
