Oprah Winfrey’s Harvard Commencement Speech: Failure is Just Part of Moving Through Life

If you watch enough com­mence­ment speech­es, if you gath­er the col­lec­tive wis­dom of peo­ple who “have made it” in life, you start to see a trend. The key to life isn’t being smarter than the rest, though that does­n’t hurt. The key is resilience — your abil­i­ty to deal with inevitable fail­ures, learn from your mis­takes, dust your­self off emo­tion­al­ly, phys­i­cal­ly or finan­cial­ly, and then move for­ward. It’s eas­i­er said than done, but essen­tial. J.K. Rowl­ing, who went from home­less­ness to writ­ing Har­ry Pot­ter, deliv­ered that mes­sage at Har­vard sev­er­al years ago. Now Oprah Win­frey, who emerged from the Jim Crow South to become Amer­i­ca’s most endur­ing TV per­son­al­i­ty, returns to Har­vard to tell stu­dents her ver­sion of that sto­ry:

There is no such thing as fail­ure. Fail­ure is just life try­ing to move us in anoth­er direc­tion. Now, when you’re down there in the hole, it looks like fail­ure. … Give your­self time to mourn what you think you may have lost, but then here’s the key: Learn from every mis­take because every expe­ri­ence, encounter and par­tic­u­lar­ly your mis­takes are there to teach you and force you into being more who you are. And then fig­ure out what is the next right move. And the key to life is to devel­op an inter­nal moral, emo­tion­al GPS that can tell you which way to go.

For more insights into con­struc­tive­ly man­ag­ing fail­ure, you can vis­it these talks below:

Paulo Coel­ho on The Fear of Fail­ure

Conan O’Brien’s Har­vard Grad­u­a­tion Speech

Stephen Fry: What I Wish I Knew When I Was 18

via Har­vard Gazette


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Comments (19)
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  • Pierre says:

    To be a suc­cess­ful flute play­er, put your fin­gers over the holes and blow here.

    Hon­est­ly, there has nev­er been a com­mence­ment speech in his­to­ry that said any­thing even remote­ly use­ful.

  • Avi Burstein says:

    I don’t think com­mence­ment speech­es are meant to be “use­ful”. They’re meant to be inspi­ra­tional.

  • Avi Burstein says:

    And regard­ing Oprah’s mes­sage, it’s in line with the research on the impor­tance of “grit” over oth­er qual­i­ties:
    http://americanradioworks.publicradio.org/features/tomorrows-college/grit/angela-duckworth-grit.html

  • A Farkas says:

    Unfor­tu­nate­ly, many Har­vardites will nev­er have to expe­ri­ence fail­ure, and will go on to be awful CEO’s, et al, because of it.

  • joseph russoniello says:

    Oprah You should say instead: ” With Luck, there is no such thing as fail­ure”

  • Barbara O'Meara says:

    Oprah said it per­fect­ly. We all encounter moments in our lives when we seem stuck in some rut, then mirac­u­lous­ly we move beyond that rut. Some­how life is per­fect­ly in har­mo­ny with where we are each meant to be at the exact moment through­out our lives. I went full cir­cle a few years back real­iz­ing that most every­one I met in Alas­ka played an impor­tant part in sav­ing a trib­al vil­lage from los­ing it’s eth­nic­i­ty. Drugs, alco­hol, greedy embez­zlers, had con­sumed the spir­its of the vil­lage. I had a vision, fol­lowed the direc­tions of the voic­es that spoke to me, and voila’ when it was all over, I real­ized, “I was born to do this one task” No one else could pos­si­bly have accom­plished it. Only I had been direct­ed for the past 30 years to meet the peo­ple and learn things that were required to bring about the con­clu­sion nec­es­sary to save a tribe from com­plete destruc­tion. “If we pay atten­tion, we all have a pur­pose” It might not be to be rich and famous, but when we com­plete the task, there is a blessed full­ness that engulfs our spir­its. “We are not with­out rea­son”

  • teresita ignacio says:

    yes, it is okey…Ophra you did it again…i have been hear­ing your voice for more than twen­ty years, my life will not be it with­out your talks…Kudos! you are the embod­i­ment of how life is to live…love you…mwah!

  • Danny Mangru says:

    Suc­cess is the assur­ance obtained in Christ of being able to stand in judg­ment before God with the full con­fi­dence of a faith­ful saint.All oth­er accom­plish­ments though essen­tial they may be are sec­ondary to this one over­rid­ing objec­tive.

  • cLARENCE wILLIAMS says:

    VERY INSPIRATIONAL.

  • christopher palermo says:

    A bizarre mega­lo­ma­ni­a­cal tirade. Is she run­ning for pres­i­dent?

  • Estella Kent Walthour says:

    MY GOD OPRAH I HAVE LISTEN AT MANY SPEECHS BEFORE I HAVE LISTEN TO THE PRESIDENT GIVE THEIR SPEECH, BUT TODAY WAS MY FIRST TIME LOOKING INTO MY LIFE FROM A DIFFERENT POINT OF VIEW.AT 68 YEARS OLD MY HEART WENT WEAK I CRIED REAL TEARS OF LIFE THAT I MISS OUT ON. BUT I AM GREATFUL FOR MY LIFE I HAVE BEFORE. THANKS FOR THAT TALK YOU GAVE AT HARVARD GRADUATION HAS MADE THOSE PASS YEARS GO AWAY. MAY GOD BLESS YOU. AND HARVARD TO LET YOU TELL YOUR PART IN LIFE AND YOUR STRUGGLE AND BECAME A DEFEATER,SO CAN I ALONG WITH ALL THE GRADUATES OF HARVARD.THANKS AGAIN OPRAH.

  • Dennis Osiemo says:

    Thumbs up Oprah your speech­es has inspires many of view­ers all over the world.From Kenya con­grat­u­la­tions!

  • Hanoch says:

    It is refresh­ing to hear some­one who is appar­ent­ly lis­tened to and high­ly regard­ed by many deliv­er a mes­sage like that. Enough with the men­tal­i­ty of envy, ingrat­i­tude, and vic­tim­hood.

  • Susan Chang says:

    This is so instrumental/inspirational!

  • Seik FAYE says:

    J’ai suivi avec pas­sion votre dis­cours à Harvard,une allo­cu­tion exem­plaire et instruc­tive à plus d’un titre.Votre personne,vos actions sont des sources d’in­spi­ra­tion pour la réus­site de ce que nous voulons faire pour un monde meilleur surtout pour nous qui voulons chang­er les choses dans des pays peu nan­tis comme le Séné­gal.
    Mer­ci et Dieu vou pro­tége.
    Seik

  • nancy says:

    Is great that she spoke to the grad­u­ates the impor­tance of mak­ing a dif­fer­ence. It starts with one per­son. Human kindnes it gets for­got­ten with pow­er. Lets end hunger, self­ish­ness, hate. Lets make it ok.,

  • Poonam says:

    won­der­ful speech-inspirational,motivational and energetic.by lis­ten­ingthe exam­ples giv­en by oprah made me to look into myself;to be the change.

  • potato says:

    super major swag

  • tamato says:

    pure mlg speech

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