Charlie Day on doing something that makes you great

Do what makes you happy? Sure…maybe…no. No. Do what makes you great, so argues Charlie Day, creator of It’s Always Sunny in Philedelphia, in his commencement speech to Merrimack college. In an amusing set of vignettes, Charlie outlines how his choices shaped his success: “Fail, pick yourself up and fail again. Because without this struggle, what is your success anyway?”

  

“You cannot let a fear of failure, or a fear of comparison, or a fear of judgement stop you from doing what’s going to make you great. You cannot succeed without this risk of failure, you cannot have a voice without the risk of criticism and you cannot love without the risk of loss. You must go out and take these risk. … Do what’s uncomfortable, and scary, and hard, but pays off in the long run. Be willing to fail. Let yourself fail. Fail in the way and the place where you would want to fail. Fail, pick yourself up and fail again. Because without this struggle, what is your success anyway?”

Strengths mined: