“A mere seven years after my graduation day, I had failed on an epic scale. An exceptionally short-lived marriage had imploded, and I was jobless, a lone parent, and as poor as it is possible to be in modern Britain, without being homeless.”
Those were the words of Harry Potter author JK Rowling as she delivered the commencement speech at Harvard’s commencement ceremony. She called her address “The Fringe Benefits of Failure, and the Importance of Imagination.” In the speech, she discussed how failure in life taught her many lessons that enabled her to become so successful later in life.
It was 1990 when she first conceived the idea for the Harry Potter story. In the time that passed after that, she watched her marriage end, was living on state benefits and was diagnosed with clinical depression. When the first book was being published, she was told that she should get a job because she had little chance of success writing children’s books.
However Rowling persevered through seven difficult years from when she first had the idea to when the book was published and became a success. The first book was followed by six others as well as major motion pictures. Today, it is estimated that the value of the Harry Potter brand is $15 billion.
How did this happen? How did an out of work single mother become the top writer in the world? In her speech, Rowling discussed that it was possible because of failure. “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.”
Failure is not inherently evil. Often, people who fail gain a greater perspective and that helps them rise again with more focus and direction on what is really important to them.
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