JK Rowling transcript: http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2008/06/text-of-j-k-rowling-speech/

TED Ed: http://ed.ted.com/lessons/j-k-rowling-speaks-at-harvard-commencement

TED Talk: https://www.ted.com/talks/jk_rowling_the_fringe_benefits_of_failure

Here's the main part that speaks to me:

Ultimately, we all have to decide for ourselves what constitutes failure, but the world is quite eager to give you a set of criteria if you let it. So 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.

...

So today, I wish you nothing better than similar friendships. And tomorrow, I hope that even if you remember not a single word of mine, you remember those of Seneca, another of those old Romans I met when I fled down the Classics corridor, in retreat from career ladders, in search of ancient wisdom:

As is a tale, so is life: not how long it is, but how good it is, is what matters.

I wish you all very good lives.

Katts on Imzy writes:

I liked her view that everyone does fail. As she says, even if you live so cautiously that you never "fail", you've failed by default by not truly living. It's not failing that defines you, it's who you are when you've failed and what you learn about yourself.

Beemo on Imzy adds:

Okay, this is sooo important. Everyone at every age needs to be reminded of this because it is too easy to get demoralized by failure. But the path to success is about weathering failure.

Source: https://imzy.com/kindness/post/jk_rowling_on_fringe_benefits_of_failure

See also Marc and Angel:

http://pandawhale.com/post/72082/one-hard-thing-you-have-to-do-to-be-happy-healthy-and-successful-get-comfortable-with-being-uncomfortable-by-marc-and-angel