Benefits of Failure

And here’s an excerpt from JK Rowlings graduation address at Harvard:

I think it fair to say that by any conventional measure, 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. The fears that my parents had had for me, and that I had had for myself, had both come to pass, and by every usual standard, I was the biggest failure I knew.

Now, I am not going to stand here and tell you that failure is fun. That period of my life was a dark one, and I had no idea that there was going to be what the press has since represented as a kind of fairy tale resolution. I had no idea then how far the tunnel extended, and for a long time, any light at the end of it was a hope rather than a reality.

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. Had I really succeeded at anything else, I might never have found the determination to succeed in the one arena I believed I truly belonged. I was set free, because my greatest fear had been realised, and I was still alive, and I still had a daughter whom I adored, and I had an old typewriter and a big idea. And so rock bottom became the solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life.

You might never fail on the scale I did, but some failure in life is inevitable. 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.

Failure gave me an inner security that I had never attained by passing examinations. Failure taught me things about myself that I could have learned no other way. I discovered that I had a strong will, and more discipline than I had suspected; I also found out that I had friends whose value was truly above the price of rubies.

The knowledge that you have emerged wiser and stronger from setbacks means that you are, ever after, secure in your ability to survive. You will never truly know yourself, or the strength of your relationships, until both have been tested by adversity. Such knowledge is a true gift, for all that it is painfully won, and it has been worth more than any qualification I ever earned.

A wonderful and inspiring success story

Published on February 24, 2010 in unsung heroes. 0 Comments
By Scott Allison and George Goethals

Born with fibular hemimelia — missing fibula bones — Aimee Mullins remembers hating her physical therapy sessions as a child. She had to do innumerable repetitive exercises that involved using her legs to bend thick elastic bands to build up her muscles. She hated them and tried to bargain with her doctor to avoid doing them.

Her doctor told her, “Aimee, you are such a strong and powerful little girl, I think you’re going to break one of these bands. When you do break it, I’m going to give you $100.”

With these words, her doctor forever changed her worldview. “What he effectively did for me was re-shape an awful daily occurrence into a new and promising experience for me. I have to wonder to what extent his vision and his declaration of me as a strong and powerful little girl shaped my own view of myself as an inherently strong, powerful, and athletic person well into the future.”

By any measure, Mullins’ life has been a remarkable success story. Mullins competed in the Paralympics in 1996 in Atlanta, where she ran the 100-meter dash in 17.01 seconds and jumped 3.14 meters in the long-jump. She is a college graduate, actress, fashion model, and motivational speaker. Mullins works with numerous non-profit organizations and is President of the Women’s Sports Foundation.

“People have continually wanted to talk about overcoming adversity,” she says. “This phrase never sat right with me. Implicit in this phrase is the idea that success or happiness is about emerging on the other side of a challenging experience unscathed or unmarked by the experience. But in fact, we are changed. We are marked, of course, by a challenge, whether physically or emotionally, or both.

“I’m going to suggest that this is a good thing. Adversity isn’t an obstacle that we need to get around in order to resume living our life. It’s part of our life.

“I’m not trying to diminish the impact, the weight of a person’s struggle. There is adversity and challenge in life, and it’s all very real.

“The question isn’t whether you’re going to meet adversity. It’s how you’re going to meet it. And so our responsibility isn’t to shield those we care for from adversity, but to prepare them to meet it well. We do a disservice to our kids when we make them feel they aren’t equipped to adapt to adversity.

“Find those opportunities wrapped in adversity. Maybe the idea is not so much overcoming adversity. It’s opening ourselves up to it. It’s embracing it. Grappling with it. Maybe even dancing with it.

“Perhaps if we see adversity as natural, consistent, and useful, we’re less burdened by it. Darwin illustrated a truth about the human character. It’s not the strongest to survive, nor is it the most intelligent to survive. It is the one who is most adaptable to change. The human ability to survive and flourish is driven by the struggle of the human spirit. Transformation, adaptation is our greatest human skill. Perhaps until we are tested, we don’t know what we’re made of. Maybe that’s what adversity gives us: a sense of self, a sense of our own power.

“We can give ourselves a gift. We can re-imagine adversity as more than just tough times. Adversity is just change that we haven’t adapted ourselves to yet.”

Aimee Mullins’ entire motivational speech can be seen and heard at http://tinyurl.com/yacel74.