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| Credit: Ashutosh Sonwani |
I always was fond of reading self-help books in my teenage years. The first book which inspired and gave me a lot of positivity was the Chicken Soup for the Teenage Soul. I vividly remember reading stories about people who had suffered a lot in life and how they came out stronger. Despite having all the comfort of the world, I had my own problems but nothing as compared to the peoples in those stories.
We humans have been given this incredible gift of compassion and empathy along with a brain to think rationally. We all are wired to see things in context and it applies equally to challenges as well. When we see, hear or read about people’s struggle in life we unknowingly compare with our problems and accordingly show gratitude for things we are gifted with.
J K Rowling, the multi-millionaire author of the famous Harry Potter series, once said that at one point in life she wanted to commit suicide. Series of events unfolded one after another to push her into a deep depression. She lost her mother, with whom she was very close, and there was no money to sustain the life of a divorced mom of an infant with no job. In her words, she hit the rock bottom.
It is at this moment she started re-building the strong foundation of life on the same rock bottom. In this bottom, the story of Harry Potter took shape when she was traveling from Manchester to London on a train. She started penning down the story, but it wasn’t as easy as she imagined as her copy was rejected by 12 publishers.
But she had faith in the story and determination to get it published and when it came out of print it went to become the biggest ever best seller with over 500 million copies sold globally in 73 different languages. The book was later adapted to make a movie series and it also became a billion-dollar franchise. J K Rowling is now the first-ever writer in the billionaire club.
It is a fact that challenges change your orientation and you start visualizing the world from a different perspective. Rowling lost all before regaining her new self as a writer from rock bottom. The journey of suicidal depression to billionaire tells us that by the power of will and passion one can realize the impossible. If you have seen the rock bottom of your life you lose your sense of fear as you realize that you cannot go below than that and the only way forward is upward. And at this moment if you hold yourself together and keep your mind stable you can regain your potential and recreate a new world altogether.
You are well aware of the success of the Harry Potter series. I am a big fan of Harry Potter, not because I know about the writer but the sheer power of imagination that could create such a multi-layered story and characters with strong messaging. It isn’t easy to create such a unique story and having faith that it will be liked and appreciated by all. The determination to get it published after 12 rejections is extraordinary, especially when the personal life is in shambles.
It was her firm belief in her creation that kept her motivated she continued trying until the Harry Potter shows the light of the day. It is also a fact that each life is unique and everyone has his/her own set of problems, but if you hold yourself together in the waning phase and continue trying you will definitely be in the waxing phase soon. Accept all developing situation as just one component of your highly diversified spectrum of life and keep in pursuing your dream. Your past might be of uncomfortable memories, but that doesn’t mean your future will also be the same. You can turn that upside down, just hold yourself. All you need is to learn the art of building the foundation on the rock bottom and build your own world.
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