Great American inventor and businessman Thomas Edison was a trailblazer. He is remembered for his groundbreaking innovation, having developed the long-lasting incandescent light bulb, phonograph and motion picture camera. His legacy is the 1,000 patents he had to his name. What we don’t hear about is the fantastic number of failures he experienced in his lifetime.

Edison preferred to view his botched ideas in a different light, once saying, “I have not failed. I have just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.” He’s not alone. Walt Disney was once fired from a newspaper job for lacking creativity. He even declared bankruptcy after one of his first animation studios tanked.

Colonel Harland David Sanders was fired from a myriad of jobs and didn’t start frying chicken until he was in his 40s. He hit the road after a failed business attempt, living in his car while attempting to peddle his recipe. At age 62, his efforts culminated in the creation of one of the most recognizable franchises in history.

Speaking of Kentucky Fried Chicken, Chinese entrepreneur Jack Ma couldn’t even land a job at the franchise that opened in his hometown. He also failed his college entrance exam three times and was passed over for 30 jobs. He went on to found e-commerce site Alibaba, which pulls in over $75 billion in revenues annually.

It took James Dyson 5,128 tries to get the Dyson Dual Cyclone Vacuum just right. He could have thrown in the towel after the fifth or 500th attempt, but he pressed on instead of dwelling on his missteps. Now his net worth is creeping toward $5 billion and his company has added fans, heaters, hair dryers, lighting and accessories to its line-up.

“We have to embrace failure and almost get a kick out of it,” Dyson told Entrepreneur.com. “Not in a perverse way, but in a problem-solving way. Life is a mountain of solvable problems and I enjoy that.”

It’s this type of mindset that psychologists say can help us cope with a cycle of setbacks. University of Kent professors Dr. Joachim Stroeber and Dr. Dirk Janssen conducted a study where 149 students recorded their biggest failures each day, including details on how they worked through the failure and their resulting mood. The study found subjects remained positive when they utilized three distinct coping mechanisms: positive reframing, acceptance and humor. On the flip side, denial, venting and seeking out social support did little to lift the subjects’ spirits.

“It’s no use ruminating about small failures and setbacks and drag yourself further down,” Stroeber was quoted as saying. “Instead it is more helpful to try to accept what happened, look for positive aspects and – if it is a small thing – have a laugh about it.”

There is no arguing that rejection hurts. In fact, the same areas of the brain light up when we face rejection and physical pain. Thousands of years ago, being rejected by your tribe meant losing warmth, food supply and the protection of the group. It would kill you. That is why we’re hardwired to avoid rejection, say evolutionary psychologists.

Humans are crummy at gauging the strength of their emotions and often overestimate how much future failure will sting. The fear of the imagined failure is almost always worse than the real-life event. Keeping facts like this in mind – and balanced by remembering all the things we’ve done right – can help give us the courage to forge ahead.

When J.K. Rowling started writing the first Harry Potter book, she received countless rejection letters from publishers. Fresh out of a failed marriage and living as a single mother on welfare, she had many days when she nearly gave up. In retrospect, she now considers those early flops as gifts that were “painfully won.”

“It is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all – in which case, you fail by default,” Rowling said.

Sometimes the biggest failure is doing nothing at all. What are you waiting for? It’s time to get it wrong so one day you have a chance to get it right.

Remember, implementing the following three strategies will help you recover from failure quickly while maintaining a positive attitude:

• Positive reframing – look for the good in what has happened

• Acceptance – realize failure is normal and part of the process

• Humor – make light of your situation and have a laugh