Indomitable Spirit
An indomitable spirit refers to an unyielding and unconquerable nature, characterised by resilience and perseverance in the face of adversity.
In the 10-years I have been working for myself I have faced adversity many times; financial, physical and mental and yet throughout it all I never once thought of giving up.
Here’s a picture of me outside the offices of Bloomsbury in London, the publishers of my latest book Detox Your Culture. In the eight years to 2023 I had published six books and yet it was still incredibly difficult to get a publisher to take this book in the UK.
I tried approaching publishers directly to begin with, but to no avail. Of the 10 I approached, only one messaged me back and encouraged me to use a literary agent.
So I searched for literary agents in the UK and contacted 32 (I’ve just counted the list that I made!), of which just two responded to let me know that they’re not taking on any more books.
At that point, it would have been easy to give up. Yet my indomitable spirit was strong, so I kept at it. Recognising that if I could get a copy of the manuscript (or an excerpt from it) into the hands of editors I could at least start a conversation.
So I used a mix of Google and LinkedIn to identify the non-fiction editors in different publishing houses, found (or guessed!) their email addresses and sent out my book pitch. Two publishing houses responded. Bloomsbury were the more proactive of the two and were keen to get it out into the world. With their support, Detox Your Culture achieved Amazon best-seller status just 14 months after sending those speculative emails.
Of course, without a continued push the book will simply be lost in a new wave of books (around 75,000 are released globally each week!), so it’s my responsibility to keep reminding people of the value the book can provide. And that’s where the indomitable spirit, once again, comes in!
It would have been easy to give up at any stage of this journey and you will hit similar roadblocks in your work too. You have to believe in yourself and your vision for your future self. If you don’t believe it, no one else will either.
As Mahatma Gandhi once said, “Strength does not come from physical capacity. It comes from an indomitable will.”