When JK Rowling began to write her first novel, she was a single-mother pent up in a tiny flat in Edinburgh, Scotland. Struggling to make ends meet, she scraped by on a meager public welfare check provided by the state. In the solitude of her desperate situation, Rowling even contemplated suicide.
Rowling’s saving grace and source of inspiration was her infant daughter. Determined to support her child, she resolved to put her talents to work. While her baby napped, Rowling would pull out a pen and paper to compose ideas for a book. Laboring under a lingering cloud of poverty, she would try to clear her mind in order to sketch out characters and plotlines. In spare moments here and there, week after week, Rowling toiled away on her story.
Demonstrating a remarkable will to persevere, JK Rowling eventually secured a grant from a local arts council and published her first novel. Before long, the Harry Potter series became a worldwide sensation, and Rowling an international celebrity.
What can JK Rowling teach us about perseverance?
1) Perseverance springs from having purpose.
Even the most ambitious leader’s willpower eventually fails her in the absence of passion. Passion stems from having a clear sense of purpose. Furthermore, the most powerful passion comes from a desire to provide for, or serve, others.
2) Perseverance necessitates discarding the belief that life is easy.
When it comes to chasing our dreams and exercising our potential, we are quick to point to the obstacles in our path. We cite adverse circumstances as excuses for playing small in life, or we blame a lack of time, resources, and energy. To step into a life of influence, there comes a time when we must drown out the excuses and get to work. Our dreams aren’t magically delivered to our doorstep; they must be tracked down by persevering through life’s trials and tempests.
3) Perseverance means not stopping because you’re tired, but because the task is done.
For an author, inspiration may come in a moment, but carrying a manuscript to completion takes thousands of hours of work. In struggling to convert the creativity in their minds into imaginative prose, many writers grow weary and give up. Rowling faced the additional fatigue of raising a child as a single parent. Yet she refused to let the tiresome process of fleshing out her ideas, and the weight of caretaking her daughter, deter her from finishing her books.
Questions for Leaders
Look back to a time in life when you had to persevere. What were the circumstances? How did you overcome them? What did you gain by persevering?
John Maxwell grew up in the 1950s in the small Midwestern city of Circleville, Ohio. John's earliest childhood memory is of knowing that he would someday be a pastor. He professed faith in Christ at the age of three, and reaffirmed that commitment when he was 13. At age 17, John began preparing for the ministry. He attended Circleville Bible College, earning his bachelor's degree in 1969. In June of that same year, he married his sweetheart, Margaret, and moved to tiny Hillham, Indiana, where he began his first pastorate.
While serving in his second church, Maxwell began to study the correlation between leadership effectiveness and ministry effectiveness. On July 4, 1976, while preaching at a service commemorating America's bicentennial, John sensed that God was calling him into a ministry to pastors. Within days after that event, pastors began to contact him, asking for his assistance in nurturing their churches. Over the next four years, on an informal basis, John helped scores of fellow pastors. Then, in 1980, he was asked to become Executive Director of Evangelism for the Wesleyan denomination.
Though his time at Wesleyan headquarters was productive, John soon realized that his deeper desire was to help pastors from numerous denominations. He knew that desire would be unfulfilled if he were to stay at denominational headquarters. As a result, in 1981 John accepted the call to return to the pastorate, this time at Skyline Wesleyan Church in the San Diego, California area. But he did so with the church's blessing to pursue his vision. The Skyline congregation allowed him to continue mentoring and assisting pastors even as he led them to new levels.
In 1985, as he continued to equip and encourage other pastors, John took the next crucial step in leadership development. He founded a new company called INJOY and created the INJOY Life Club, featuring a monthly tape for leaders. The fledging operation, established in the corner of a garage, was soon bursting at the seams. The INJOY Life Club tapes were received with great enthusiasm, and the number of subscriptions quickly increased from hundreds to thousands. Simultaneously, the demand for other resources and seminars exploded. Pastors from coast to coast were responding, and their desire for help was even greater than John had anticipated.
As the years passed, INJOY began demanding more and more of John's time. In 1995, he resigned from his position as senior pastor at Skyline following a very fruitful 14-year tenure. The church had tripled in size and its lay ministry involvement had increased ten-fold. Dr. Maxwell is in great demand today as a speaker. Through his bestselling books, audio and video resources, and major conferences, he communicates directly with more than one million people every year. He is frequently asked to speak for organizations such as Promise Keepers and Focus on the Family, but his greatest joy and desire is to help pastors become better leaders.
Because the need for leadership development knows no borders, John established EQUIP, a non-profit organization which trains leaders in urban communities, academic institutions, and within international organizations. EQUIP is also spearheading a movement which has enlisted more than one million pastoral prayer partners who covenant to pray specifically for those who shepherd God's flock.
John continues to seek new opportunities to help churches and church leaders. He knows that one thing is constant: the only hope for the world is salvation through the Lord Jesus Christ, who gives life abundantly.