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Transcript

Failure is a Gift · The Daily Writer

• 0:06
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome to the Daily Rider Podcast, where we bring you tips and inspiration each day to help you build habits for writing success.
• 0:14
  SPEAKER_00: For more resources, including your free Daily Rider Starter Kit, visit DailyWriterLife.com.
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_00: When you hear the name JK Rowling, what comes to mind?
• 0:26
  SPEAKER_00: You probably picture an ultra successful author whose books are adored by millions of readers all over the world.
• 0:33
  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.
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_00: But it wasn't always that way.
• 0:42
  SPEAKER_00: Just a handful of years before she published the first Harry Potter book, J.K.
• 0:46
  SPEAKER_00: Rowling was a poor, jobless, single mother who was fresh off of a divorce.
• 0:51
  SPEAKER_00: She had conceived of the idea for the Harry Potter series a few years earlier, and now she was at a low point in her life, so she had time to give her full attention to her writing.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_00: Rowling later reflected on this experience in a 2008 commencement speech at Harvard University.
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_00: She said this, why do I talk about the benefits of failure?
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_00: Simply because failure meant a stripping away of the inessential.
• 1:16
  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.
• 1:26
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes we think of failure as a curse, as something to avoid, but what if failure was actually a gift?
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_00: What if your failure was the soil that helped grow your confidence?
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_00: What if your failure gave you the opportunity to do the thing that you really wanted to do?
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_00: Failure has a way, as J.K.
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_00: Rowling pointed out, it has a way of stripping away the inessential.
• 1:47
  SPEAKER_00: But what does that mean?
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_00: What things are inessential?
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_00: Well, there's a lot of answers you could probably give to that question, but the most important thing that failure strips away is expectations.
• 1:57
  SPEAKER_00: When nobody's expecting anything from you, it's a great gift because there's no opportunity to disappoint anybody.
• 2:03
  SPEAKER_00: There's no critics, there's no crowd to please, and there are no internet trolls ready to pounce on your every word.
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_00: So if you feel like you're at kind of a low point right now, I know this sounds odd, but I want you to take a moment and be a little bit grateful.
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_00: Use this opportunity to be daring, to do something bold and unexpected.
• 2:21
  SPEAKER_00: Write that weird story that's been swimming around in your head for a while, the one that nobody would expect from you.
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_00: Or use this time to start that blog, that podcast, or that video channel that you've been thinking about for so long.
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_00: Honestly, the best gifts come in unexpected wrapping.
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_00: So don't be too quick to run away from the failure that you might be feeling right now.
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_00: It might honestly be the best gift that you've ever received.
• 2:45
  SPEAKER_00: Here's today's challenge.
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_00: If you think you have failed in some big way, how can you use that experience to get moving in the right direction?
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks for listening, and I'll see you next time.