Don't Let Anyone Dictate Your Dreams | Jack Canfield

Hi, everybody. I have a story I want to tell you today that I think has a very powerful lesson. There's a woman named Katherine Lonigan. And Katherine was a very gifted writer in high school. And as a result of that, she got a scholarship, partial scholarship, to go to college in Ohio. And her professor decided that she should take this advanced class. It was an advanced writing symposium led by a visiting Harvard professor, normally only attended by second semester seniors, but because of her giftedness, he decided that she should attend this course with the seniors while she was a freshman. And so she gets into the class in the first, you know, the first couple of weeks, just instruction, instruction, instruction, and then they have to write their first short story. She hands it in, and the next day they're going to be reading it in front of their classmates and getting feedback, but know you. But she gets a call early in the morning from the professor that says, stop by my office before class. So she stops by the office and he says, we have to have a chat. And here's the deal. Put it simply, your writing stinks. I have no idea why you're in this class. You don't belong here. Your writing has. There's no characterization in the characters. The structure doesn't exist. You know, I'll give it that. You have some good descriptions, but, you know, you don't belong in this class. And she said, well, I. If I drop out now, I'm not going to be able to keep my scholarship and I'm not going to be able to get my summa cum laude, which I want. And he said, yeah, I know you went for that. And so what I'm going to do is I'll make a deal with you. I will shepherd you through this course and I'll give you a B if you promise to change your measure and not write anything ever again. She said, well, what am I going to do? He said, well, I don't know what you're going to do. I mean, maybe you become a nurse. It's up to you. But think of this as a fortunate moment, because right now I'm telling you, you have no talent. You're going to save your parents in this university a lot of money and a lot of wasted time by not pursuing something you don't have any chance of making a living at now. She was very devastated. She goes back to her dorm, she takes her paper up to the roof, she burns it, and she says, I'm giving up all my childish dreams. And she kind of went into a depression. She did change her major moved to Texas. Now she's down in Texas for 14 years. Never wrote a word. However, she did read everything she could get her hands on because she did love to read, and she'd wanted to be a journalist. And she just realized, I can't do that, but at least I can read good writing. Now one day she's in San Antonio and they're at a motel on a vacation with her family. But that previous week, a judge had been killed by the Hell's Angels. So all these media people, all these journalists, both press and both television, radio were in town, and she noticed there was a group of them sitting around the pool, people she recognized from television. And so she went over and she says, I just want to acknowledge you guys for being journalists. I love what you do. You're always in search of the truth. You know, I wanted to be a writer, but I was told I couldn't do it. He said, well, if you wanted to be a writer, you would have written. She said, no, I was told on good authority. He says, whose good authority is that? Well, he was a Harvard professor. This guy says, oh, my God, what do they know? They're professors. I write for a living. I'll tell you what, here's my card. Do you ever write anything? Give me a call. I'll take a look at it. I'll let you know if you have any talent. So she spends about a half a year writing a book. She sends it off to him. A couple weeks go by, she gets a call. She says in a. He told her, in a half hour, you're going to get a call from my agent in New York, and she wants to publish your book. She wants to go and see if she can publish her book. So she gets the call. Person says, I love it. You're an incredibly talented writer. Writer. I want to represent you. Now, I don't remember what her first book was called, but her second book was called Romancing the Stone. And Romancing a Stone, as you remember, was made into a movie with Michael Douglas. And then the second movie was called Jewel of the Nile. And that was also a book that she wrote. And so the reality is, she's since then written about 27 novels. She's made millions of dollars. Many of her books have been made into movies and television shows and so on. And here's the point. We lost her talent for 14 years because she believed what someone else told her about her talent. Don't give away your dream to some outside authority. Kathryn once told me that she had grown up Catholic and as Catholics, always, you know, you bow to higher authority, she said. That was a huge mistake for me. If I had to do it over, I wouldn't do it again. So whatever your dream is, never, ever, ever give up on it. It's important that you fulfill your dream. And you may have to learn more. You may have to go back to school. You may need to take more classes. You may need to get a mentor or a coach, someone that can take you to the next level with what you want to do. But don't give up on your dream. Your dreams are put in your heart because that's what you're meant to do. Well, thanks for watching today. I hope you got value and if you did, please take a moment to like it, share it with someone you care about who could get benefit from also watching this. And make sure to subscribe to our channel here at YouTube so that we can you can get more information. There's going to be a lot of these coming out over the course of the year. We'd love to have you get take advantage of that. And if you'd like more information on what we talked about, make sure to go to my website@jackcampfield.com where there's a lot of free resources that will help you take what you learned today even further. So thanks for watching.