2017 commencement speeches The best work advice

2017 commencement speeches The best work advice2017 commencement speeches The best work advicePart of the process of graduating is hearing unsolicited career advice about what you should be doing next with your life.Here at Ladders we sifted through the good, the great, and the tired clichesto find you the best career wisdom commencement speakers gave the Class of 2017.1. Get used to failure. Failure is there to wake you up.Failurewelches a common relatable theme many of the speakers gave in their speeches. It reminds us that many of these famous speakers were just like many of the graduates in the audience, full of ambition and unsure of what to do with it.As comedian Will Ferrell told University of Southern Californias Class of 2017, he welches scared as a college graduate trying out sketch comedyand he still gets scared now as a famous actor speaking to a crowd.But he learned how to overcome his fear of failureby knowing its worse to never try at all My fear of failure never appro ached in magnitude my fear of what if. What if I never tried at all?Venture capitalistMartin Casado, who sold his startup for $1.26 billion, told new gradsthey need to embracefailure because trying and failing means youre not stalling your own progress by hiding. Failure is how you know youre progressing, Casado believes get back up, apply what youve learned, and hit reset.2. Get resilientAs the co-authors on Option B, a new book about resilience, both behavioral psychologist Adam Grant and Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg made resilience the theme of their commencement speeches.Grit doesnt mean keep doing the thing thats failing, Granttold new grads. It means define your dreams broadly enough that you can find new ways to pursue them when your first and second plans fail.For Sandberg who discussed her husbands death in her speech, resiliencewas a personal message. As someone who cried every night after the first month of losing her husband, Sandberg said everyone should learn the stren gth to rely on others because there are times to lean in and there are times to lean on.Resilience is something we can all build through shared experiences and through shared narratives, Sandberg believes. We are not born with a certain amountof resilience it is a muscle and that means we can build it, shesaid.3. Get paidWhile other speakers focused on dreams, Maria Bamford, a self-described crass, money-grubbing comedian from Duluth, discussed the gritty details of how to fund thosedreams.For her public salary negotiation lesson, she used the example of how she negotiated her commencement fee from zero dollars to $10,000.When her alma mater, theUniversity of Minnesota,initially said it couldnt pay her, Bamford countered, Was the University of Minnesotas College of Liberal Arts suggesting that I couldnt get paid for the exact job that I paid them to teach me how to get paid to do?Knowing to never say no without a number, she eventually raised the fee from free to $10,000 and she ga ve the money that remained after taxes to a student in the audience. Its a valuable lesson every graduating adult should learn know your worth.4. Dont compare yourself to othersStay in your lane, and dont get jealous about what others are doing alongside you was another theme that emerged from speeches.Please, please, oh please, dont let yourself get caught up in the trap of comparison. You know what Im talking about. Ignore the silly 30-Under-30 list, actress Octavia Spencer told Kent State University. Comparing yourself to others success only slows you down from finding your own.For Pharrell Williams, staying focused means not getting caught up in fame and attention.These great scientists, public servants, and activists cannot be bothered with building their Instagram followers, he told New York University graduates. Or how many views they get on YoutubeBut they are the real influencers. Their work makes us healthier, safer, more enriched, and more intelligent.5. Serve othersSummo n your compassion, your curiosity, your empathy towards others and your commitment to service. Give more than you receive and I promise you, it will come back to you in ways you cant possibly imagine, is the advice former Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz had for graduates.Thats similar advice the woman who made a billion-dollar career out of giving advice, Oprah Winfrey, had for graduates. Winfrey urged Smith College graduates toshift the paradigm to service and the rewards will come.Instead of focusing on individual gain, Winfrey believesnew grads should be asking themselves How can I be used? Life, use me. Show me through my talents and my gifts, show me through what I know, what I need to know, what I have yet to learn, how to be used in the greater service to life.