All of the best, the most successful, the hard-nosed people out there have one trait in common – resiliency, not excuses. One of the greatest acts someone can perform is to drop the idea that excuses exist, and focus instead on persevering through the problem.
Resilience: “the process and outcome of successfully adapting to difficult or challenging life experiences, especially through mental, emotional, and behavioral flexibility and adjustment to external and internal demands.”
A common household name carries an enormous sense of the very word: J.K. Rowling.
J.K. Rowling in 1998.
Rowling grew up average; her family was not “well-off” when she was a child. Her parents worked as a mechanic and a teacher’s assistant. They did not necessarily believe in the idea that someone could make money as a writer. So, Rowling went to college and took a job as a secretary, but the drive and dream of writing novels never left her mind.
Her spark of brilliance about the boy wizard and his adventures came while on a train heading to London’s King’s Cross. For over five years, Rowling worked on her masterpiece, jotting down each and every thought. While living in Portugal, she had her daughter, and her stories about Harry really began to come together.
When she moved back to Britain in 1993 after divorcing her husband, her suitcase contained stories about Harry Potter that would ultimately change her life (and the lives of people all over the world) forever. Rowling was a single parent experiencing depression and living on government assistance in Edinburgh as she spilled out Harry’s story on her typewriter. She received many rejections before signing a deal with a small publisher. She was determined to not let her obstacles in life prevent her from chasing her dreams.
Resiliency: it resides in all of us. We need only to take time to find it and embellish it in our lives.
Sources:
- https://www.insider.com/jk-rowling-harry-potter-author-biography-2017-7#she-lived-in-a-small-flat-while-going-to-cafes-to-write-harry-potter-and-the-sorcerers-stone-6
- https://www.jkrowling.com/about/#:~:text=Jo%20conceived%20the%20idea%20of,on%20odd%20scraps%20of%20paper.
- https://www.apa.org/topics/resilience
- https://www.looper.com/221207/the-most-paused-moments-in-harry-potter-movies/
- Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, J.K. Rowling