J.K.

Rowling was a divorced single mother living on welfare when she had
the idea for the Harry Potter books.
She walked her baby in its stroller until it fell asleep, then rushed to the nearest caf to get out as many
pages as she could before the baby woke up. She is now the revered master creator of a beloved global
franchise and one of the richest women in the world.
She could have dismissed her idea as silly or focused on something more viable. But she didnt.

Albert Einstein, Alexander Graham Bell, Leonardo da Vinci,
Thomas Edison, Walt Disney and Winston Churchill are all said to have
displayed signs of dyslexia and other learning disabilities.
They did poorly in school. They were told they were stupid, talentless, unteachable, and that they would
never amount to anything beyond mediocre. I think you know they all went on to do some fairly
impressive things.
They could have believed the negative voices and been the smallest versions of themselves. But
they didnt.


Speaking of Thomas Edison
In addition to failing about 10,000 times before landing on the successful design for the light bulb (I have
not failed. Ive just found 10,000 ways that wont work), his factory building burnt to the ground when
he was 67, destroying countless lab records and millions of dollars of equipment. When he
surveyed his losses, he remarked, There is great value in disaster. All our mistakes are burned up. Thank
God we can start anew.
He could have thrown in the towel at any one of these setbacks. It certainly seemed like fate was
trying to tell him to. But he didnt.

Beethoven began to lose his hearing at the height of his career and
eventually became completely deaf.
So, he sawed the legs off his piano so he could set it on the floor and feel the vibrations as he played. His
Symphony No. 9, of which he never heard a single note, is one of the best known works of classical music.
He could have given in to the suicidal thoughts that overtook him at first and become just another
poetic tragedy. But he didnt.



Elie Weisel and Viktor Frankl experienced the unspeakable horrors of the
Nazi concentration camps.
Weisel went on to spread a message of hope, atonement and peace, drawing from his own struggles to
come to terms with the presence of evil in the world. He wrote ov er 40 books, including the acclaimed
memoir Night, and is a political activist for human justice, tolerance and freedom the world over. He was
awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his crusades for human dignity.
He could have become disillusioned, bitter and withdrawn from the world.
Most of us probably would have after this kind of experience. But he didnt.
From his own attempts to find a reason to keep living in the midst of meaningless suffering, Frankl
developed a philosophy that even in the cruellest and most hopeless of situations, man has the ability to
find internal meaning and purpose. He went on to teach that even when we are helpless to change our
circumstances, we have within us the power to summon the will to live. He pioneered existential and
humanist psychiatric systems and wrote more than 32 books, including his hallmark Mans Search for
Meaning.
He could have been broken and defeated by the horrors he experienced.
Most of us probably would have. But he didnt.

Nelson Mandela spent 27 years as a political prisoner.
He became a leader among his fellow inmates, fighting for better treatment, better food and study
privileges (he earned his B.A. while imprisoned through a correspondence course by the University of
London). He also became a symbol of hope and antiapartheid resistance for his entire country. While
behind bars, he continued to build his reputation as a political leader, refusing to compromise his beliefs
to gain freedom, and upon his release, he led negotiations that resulted in the democracy he had always
fought for. He was elected president of South Africa and received more than 250 awards, including the
Nobel Peace Prize. His funeral was a global event.
He could have decided to lie low, to give in, to let those 27 years sap his motivation and his
influence. But he didnt.

Jean-Dominique Bauby suffered a massive stroke that resulted in locked-in
syndrome.
The well-known French journalist, author and editor was paralyzed, speechless, and the only thing he
could do to communicate was blink his left eyelid. He went on to write the book The Diving Bell and the
Butterfly, letter by letter, with this one good eyelid. A transcriber recited a modified alphabet to Bauby
until he blinked his eye to indicate the letter he wanted. An average word took around 2 minutes to write
this way. The book was written in about 200,000 individual blinks, accomplished in 4-hour-a-day sessions
over a span of 10 months.
If anyone ever had the right to claim writers block, it was him. But he didnt.