Obstacles in Life Abound, Learn to Go Above and Around Them for Success

I was reading the story written about a guy named Stephen Cannell. Cannell had an amazingly hard time getting through in school. Because of his reading skills, he had to repeat the 1st and 4th grades. When he was about to enter the 5th grade the administrators asked him to leave and his teachers believed him to be a failure. 

When his parents put him in another school, a remedial school, they blamed his poor reading on his vision… (even though his eyesight was 20/20). By the time he got to high school he failed out of the 10th grade and had to repeat it – but at different school because again he was asked to leave. Then finally graduated, at the bottom of his class. 

Luckily, during all this time he was struggling with his reading, he did focus on the strengths he possessed – athletics. Because of this he was able to get a football scholarship to University of Oregon in 1961. That’s also where he met a teacher who noticed he had some talents and had him focus on creative writing as a career option. Cannell said “I always wrote to entertain myself…..being perfect on paper never entered my mind.” 

After graduating from college, again at the bottom of his class and not having much interest in his family’s business of interior design he started writing. Stephen started to work on his craft, the craft that, with such struggles in the reading department, had been a dead goose around his neck for most of his life to that point; “I started out doing it one hour a night, then two. I kept at it and eventually was working up to five hours a night writing TV and movie scripts, short stories, you name it – writing became my passion.”

Gradually Stephen began selling episodes for pilots then writing pilots and pitching series ideas to producers. He ended up creating many famous shows like “The Rockford Files” and “Baretta”. By the time he became famous he had written multiple novels as well as written and produced many shows.

How did this happen to a boy that was consistently told he was a failure and consistently flunked and repeated many grades? How on earth did a famous writer become from a boy who was outcast due to his inability to read?? Have you just read alternative facts!?!

No. His parents believed in him. Every time a school told him to leave, his parents put him in another school. What kept this boy’s spirits alive when everyone told him he was no good and could not read? “Sports and my dad, were my support outlets, they kept my self-esteem from taking a nose dive,” he said. And what about his vision being blamed for his poor reading, even though it was 20/20? At age 35 he was finally properly diagnosed with dyslexia.

In life there will always be people who quickly judge you, most of them have no right to. They will not want you to succeed. It will be hard – what would you do if you had to go through 20 years of people telling you that you were a failure because you were misdiagnosed? I’m sure many of you are thinking “wow, must have been tough…” But can you really imagine that? 

The good news is that you can build your support group around yourself so you can succeed.   This is a real life story of persistence and support. “You don’t need an army of people – just a few of the right people and a strong belief that you can and will do some great things – and never give up.”