Following up the message in my last post, J.K. Rowling’s 2008 Harvard commencement speech on finding success (and failure) seemed appropriate to feature here. I first caught it on Mental Floss, then found the transcript at Harvard Magazine. One of my favorite parts comes relatively early:
So why do I talk about the benefits of failure? Simply because failure meant a stripping away of the inessential. I stopped pretending to myself that I was anything other than what I was, and began to direct all my energy into finishing the only work that mattered to me.
Here’s the speech in its entirety: