Not going to make it

How do you really know that everything is going to be okay?

Cultivating the will to survive takes an irrational sense of self-determination.

You’re going to make it. Say that to yourself. You’re going to make it.

Even when everyone around you stops believing, you have to stay resolute. Present unflinching conviction, or at least the appearance of it. That’s the hard part. Swallowing fear. Forging on. Like Dumbledore at the lake of inferi.

I remember sitting on a park bench in central London while a mentor and personal hero of mine - a war veteran still learning to walk after being paralysed from the waist down by a car bomb - told me that my dream of becoming a lawyer was almost impossible.

I had just told him that I wanted to apply to my dream firm. They were about to start a new scheme that would allow me to start at the firm full-time while studying evenings and weekends. If I got in I’d be one of the first, if not the only, fee-earner at any City firm allowed to start without first completing a degree.