The Blessings of Failure

Failure. It’s something I’ve written a lot about. I wrote about here, for example.

I write about it a lot because I have tons of experience at it.

In fact, when my husband and I were racking our brain thinking up new article ideas for me to query, he said, “You have to write about something you’re good at. I know! Failure!”

Yep, it definitely was not the answer I was expecting. But there it was. And while I’ve always written about how to beat failure, I’ve never thought about failure as a blessing.

But it is.

It was after watching J.K. Rowling’s Harvard commencement speech that I was reminded about the power of failure. Rowling puts it so eloquently, articulately and honestly that you can’t help but be inspired by it.

It’s 10 minutes long and worth it. But if you don’t have the time, fast forward to her words on failure. It’s 7:10 in.

She says inspiring things like this, “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.”