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Transcript

The Gift of Failure · The Daily Writer

• 0:07
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome to the Daily Rider, where we share a lesson each day to help you cultivate the habits for creative success.
• 0:14
  SPEAKER_00: These lessons are inspired by great artists, authors, and thinkers, both past and present.
• 0:20
  SPEAKER_00: For more, you can visit us at dailywriterlife.com.
• 0:28
  SPEAKER_00: When you hear the name JK Rowling, what comes to mind?
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_00: You probably picture an ultra successful author whose books are adored by millions of readers all over the world.
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_00: As the author of the Harry Potter series, she has achieved a level of fame and fortune that very few authors will ever know.
• 0:46
  SPEAKER_00: But it wasn't always that way.
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_00: Just a handful of years before she published the first Harry Potter book, J.K.
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_00: Rowling was a poor, jobless single mom who was fresh off of a divorce.
• 0:57
  SPEAKER_00: She had conceived of the idea for the Harry Potter series a few years earlier, and now at a low point in her life that she never anticipated, she gave her full attention to her writing.
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_00: She later reflected on this experience in a 2008 commencement speech at Harvard University.
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_00: She said, Why do I talk about the benefits of failure?
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_00: Simply because failure meant a stripping away of the inessential.
• 1:21
  SPEAKER_00: 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.
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_00: We naturally think of failure as a curse, as something to avoid.
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_00: But what if failure was actually a gift?
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_00: What if your failure was the soil that helped grow your confidence?
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_00: What if it gave you the opportunity to do the thing that you really wanted to do?
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_00: Failure has a way, as JK Rowling pointed out, of stripping away the inessential.
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_00: But what does that mean?
• 1:55
  SPEAKER_00: What things are inessential?
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_00: Well, there are many answers we could give to that question, but the most important thing that failure strips away are expectations.
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_00: When nobody's expecting anything from you, it's a great gift because there's no opportunity to disappoint anybody.
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_00: There are no critics, there's no crowd to please, and most importantly, there's no internet trolls ready to pounce on your every word.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_00: So if you're at a low point, be grateful.
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_00: Use this opportunity to be daring, to do something bold and unexpected.
• 2:28
  SPEAKER_00: Write that story that's been swimming around in your head for a while.
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_00: You know, the one nobody would expect from you.
• 2:34
  SPEAKER_00: Or use this time to start that blog, start a podcast, or start that video channel you've been thinking about.
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_00: The best gifts come in unexpected wrapping.
• 2:43
  SPEAKER_00: Don't be too quick to run away from the failure you might be feeling right now.
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_00: It might just be the best gift you've ever received.
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_00: Hey, thanks so much for listening to this episode of the Daily Writer Podcast.
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_00: We really appreciate your support and hope you enjoyed this.
• 2:59
  SPEAKER_00: You can find more at DailyWriterlife.com