Ethics, Worldview & Influence

Failure, Feedback, And Recovery

In 1995, J.K. Rowling was a single mother on benefits in Edinburgh, Scotland. Her marriage had failed, she was clinically depressed, and twelve publishers had rejected the manuscript of Harry Potter. Seven years later she was one of the most successful authors in history. In 2008 she gave a Harvard commencement speech called The Fringe Benefits of Failure that explained exactly what her lowest point had taught her. In this lesson you will learn to see failure as feedback, understand how recovery actually works, rewrite a setback as a chapter in a larger story, and build a recovery plan you can use when the next failure arrives.