Anthony Burgess was 40 when he learned he
had only one year of life left to live.  

He had a brain tumour that would kill him within a year.  

He knew he had a battle on his hands.  

He was completely broke at the time and had no assets
to leave behind for his wife Lynne – soon to be a widow. 

Burgess had never been a professional novelist in the
past, but he always knew the potential was inside him
to be a writer.  

So, for the sole purpose of leaving royalties behind for
his wife, he put a piece of paper into a typewriter and
began typing. 

He had no certainty that anything he wrote would ever be
published, but he couldn’t think of anything else to do. 

“It was January of 1960,” he said, “and according to
the prognosis, I had a winter and spring and summer
to live through, and would die with the fall of the first autumn leaf.” 

Over that period of time – 3 seasons – Burgess wrote energetically,
finishing five and a half novels before the year was through
(very nearly the entire lifetime output of E.M. Forster,
and almost twice that of J. D. Salinger.)  

But Burgess did not die.  

His cancer had gone into remission and then disappeared
altogether. In his long and full life as a novelist (he is best
known for A Clockwork Orange); he wrote more than 70 books.
But without the death sentence from cancer, he may
not have written even one. 

Many of us are like Anthony Burgess, hiding greatness
inside, waiting for some external emergency to bring it out.  

Take Action 

Ask yourself what you’d do if you had Anthony
Burgess’s original predicament. “If I had just a year
to live, how would I live differently? What exactly
would I do?”  

At Resilient Minds we help our clients to develop a mindset of
long-lasting resilience so they can perform at high levels on the
really important things in both their work and personal lives. 

Have a great week. 

Jamie Ford.

“It is not how much we have, but how much we enjoy,  
that makes happiness.”

––Charles Spurgeon