OBSERVATION: Talent is, of course, important, but the two qualities that make the critical difference between talented people who succeed and those who don’t are persistence and positivity. Successful people don’t give up or lose confidence; they learn from every experience and get better.

Two of America’s greatest inventors, Charles Kettering  and Thomas Edison, embraced the same philosophy, which allowed them to take in stride what others called failure, and build upon it. Kettering said: “I failed forward to  success.  An inventor fails