Benjamin Franklin will be the first to admit that he made mistakes. Plenty of them. However, there appear to be at least 3 mistakes he never made. He tells us about those.

Franklin never accepted the current situation to be unchangeable. He thought he could change things for the better, and he looked for ways to do it. If something wasn’t quite right he would rack his mind, or work on whatever the conditions were until he could find a solution. A good example of this is when his brother suffered from kidney stones, he developed America’s first urinary catheter to ease the problem.

He never just waited for something to happen. He made things happen. When he was representing Pennsylvania at the Constitutional Convention, he listened to the arguments and the backbiting. Then he made his famous speech which changed the direction of the meetings completely. Without Ben’s inspired and inspiring speeches, the 55 delegates may never come to any accord. He showed his wisdom and his diplomacy by humbly imploring the men arguing so vehemently, to stop and begin listening to each other. Which they then did.

And Benjamin Franklin never waited for the generosity of others. He didn’t loiter and linger for favors to come his way. He continued to find ways to improve his printing business and became the owner and was quite successful. He experimented with things others just may have talked about—lightning and electricity for example. He presented plans for independence and made suggestions for improving Thomas Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence. And we could go on and on.

Ben showed us all that we can finish better than we began.