Welcome to 122nd Monday Musings !
Moral of the story :
This is a true story of a famous author, and it's not hard to guess that about whom I am talking !
The lady whom we know as a successful billionaire, didn’t have an easy life to reach there. Her name is Joanne.
Joanne’s earlier life was not easy, she had a difficult relationship with her father and they hadn’t spoken in years,
At 25, Joanne lost her mother, having seen her mother die after suffering a long time from multiple sclerosis moves to Portugal for a job and met her then future husband. but the marriage collapsed after six months.
After her divorce she moved from Portugal to Edinburgh, Scotland near her sister. The failed marriage with Portugal TV journalist Jorge Arantes caused her so much misery that she suffered clinical depression and she went as far as to contemplate suicide.
Trying to survive in Scotland, she tried her luck in a career in teaching English as a foreign language. However, in order to get the post, she needed further postgraduate certification, which required her to study full-time for one year. She matriculated herself into this course She had to rely on benefits through the state welfare support
This is the time when she saw herself as a failure. She had a failed marriage, she had no permanent work, and she had a young daughter to take care of.
But during this rock-bottom time, she realized she still had a wonderful daughter, an old typewriter, and an idea that would become the foundation for rebuilding her life.
Joanne had interest in writing , even she wrote a story when she was 6 years old.
During her welfare support she started writing a story book.
She fought to provide for her daughter and while doing so, she completes her first book, This was produced on an old manual typewriter, and much of it was written in cafes, because she had to take her young daughter out on walks to get her to fall asleep to then give her the time for creativity.
So Joanne completed her book but still it was not end of her struggle,
She started approaching publishers, but every publisher she approached has rejected her manuscript. She didn’t give up , she almost approached 12 publishers but no result
A year later she was given the green light by Barry Cunningham from Bloomsbury, who agreed to publish the book but insisted she get a day job cause there was no money in children’s books. Also insisted to use her initials name because it was thought that young boys wouldn't read a fantasy series written by a female.
And Joanne had no middle name, so she used, her paternal grandmother's name Kathleen as her middle name.
So her name full name became Joanne Kathleen Rowling , and Initials were J.K. Rowling.
Do I need to tell you which book she wrote, It was “Harry Potter“
Rest is history !
Moral of the story :
According to Forbes, Rowling is the first author in history to earn more than $1 billion from writing book
Here’s how J.K. Rowling describes this process of dealing with the hardships of her life…
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 to 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 area where I truly belonged. I was set free, because my greatest fear had been realized, 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 a solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life.
— J.K. Rowling, 2008 Harvard Commencement Address
— J.K. Rowling, 2008 Harvard Commencement Address
The “Chosen Ones” Choose Themselves
We often assume that successful people got to where they are because they went to the right school or knew the right person or had the right genetics or stumbled into the right job at the right time.
It’s easier to think about success this way because then you can say that these people were lucky to have certain advantages and you weren’t, and that’s what made the difference.
And the truth is, yes, luck does play a role in life. But luck is just an opportunity. It’s just an open door. You have to decide to walk through it and to make something of it.
The people who end up looking like the “chosen ones” — the best-selling authors, the successful business owners, the elite athletes, the talented artists — are successful first and foremost because they chose themselves before they had any measure of success.
And that’s the piece of success that isn’t as easy to accept because it often means betting on yourself when you feel like a failure.
I think there are many goals in life that require this type of struggle. For J.K. Rowling, it meant choosing to be a writer when she was a poor, single mother without a job. For you, it might mean choosing yourself when…
• you have no connections
• you are inexperienced and unproven
• you are poor and lack resources
• you are out of shape and overweight
Successful people don’t wait to be tapped, chosen, appointed, or nominated. They start before they feel ready.
They tell themselves, “It doesn’t matter whether or not it’s my fault that I’m here. This is who I am and it’s my responsibility to do something about it.”
The chosen ones choose themselves !
Make it a great Week !
Shailesh
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