Today is July 9 and the Navigate the Chaos question to consider is “How often do you allow yourself to accept help?”
Successful people who navigate the chaos, like author Stephen King, accepted help from his wife and in so doing was able to publish Carrie, his first novel.
When King was two years old, his father left the family under the pretense of "going to buy a pack of cigarettes", leaving his mother to raise King and his adopted older brother, David, by herself.
The family moved several times and when King was 11, returned to Durham, Maine, where his mother cared for her parents.
King studied at the University of Maine, graduating in 1970 with a Bachelor of Arts in English.
In 1971, King married Tabitha Spruce, a fellow student at the University of Maine. After graduation King was hired as a teacher at Hampden Academy and started submitting short stories to men’s magazines and worked on ideas for novels.
In 1973, before Carrie was published, King, his wife Tabby, and their toddler and newborn lived in a doublewide trailer. King drove a rust-bucket Buick held together with baling wire and duct tape. King’s wife, Tabby, worked second-shift at Dunkin’ Donuts. Dealing with constant rejection and criticism from publishers and readers from the articles he did get published in the nudie mag market, King grew frustrated at his writing.
He even threw a draft of Carrie out in the trash. As King wrote in his memoir “I couldn’t see wasting two weeks, maybe even a month, creating a novella I didn’t like and wouldn’t be able to sell.” But his wife found it in the trash, unwrinkled the pages, and told him to continue writing. “You’ve got something here,” she said. “I really think you do.” With her help King finished his first novel and after 30 rejections sold it to Doubleday.
French-German theologian Albert Schweitzer noted “The purpose of human life is to serve and to show compassion and the will to help others.”
King’s wife showed compassion towards her husband Stephen and he accepted her help. How often do you allow yourself to accept help?