Times Of Swaziland: SUCCESS IS ABOUT SETTING YOURSELF ON FIRE

SUCCESS IS ABOUT SETTING YOURSELF ON FIRE
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Bongani Simelane on 19/10/2024 05:51:00


This isn’t about flame wars on Twitter or the ‘net. This is about getting
hot, so hot you are on fire. It is a metaphor for feeling an urgent need to get
something done. This is usually a necessary step for attaining any level of
success, although sometimes it is luck more than burning desire. However, even
if luck was involved, to maintain or have even more success, you need a fire,
some drive, a burning desire. That brings us to how that happens. Some people
have been known to just sit there and wait for something to catch fire. However,
that rarely happens. Usually, they just sit. But that’s not the path to
success. You have to have a reason. Until you have that fire, success will
likely be a rare thing. Once you know what your reason is, why you MUST succeed,
you will have started to set yourself on fire (in a figurative sense, of
course).
We always find time for the things we must do. Not the things someone else tells
us we must do. Not the things society expects us to do. Not the things we said
we’d do. The things WE decided MUST be done will be done. If it isn’t
getting done, it’s not really a must, is it? By having a reason, and being on
fire for that reason, by having a burning desire to get it done, you will find
the time to work on it. And you will have the energy and the passion to keep
doing it, even after the first few failures. And that comes from having a
compelling reason. Those compelling reasons are usually something attached to a
very powerful emotion. The burning desire to never be poor again. The burning
desire to go to the moon (and back). The burning desire to get back to see
family and friends. The burning desire to prove the doctors wrong (and walk
again).
The answer is fairly simple. Where do you want success in your life, want it
badly enough to get up and set yourself metaphorically on fire? We’ve all had
days where things go badly for us. The difference between what we abandon and
what we pick back up is our fire. If we have a fire, a compelling reason, we
will find a way to try again, and do it over and over until we succeed. If we
don’t, or we let the failure put out the fire, we’re done. We throw in the
towel, we walk away, we quit. We give up, and that’s not the way to succeed.
When my friend was in college, he flunked out. He had become distracted and
neglected his studies. Then events followed to their inevitable conclusion. He
knew he had what it took to graduate, he just had to convince the school to let
him back in. He equated a degree with success, and he was going to achieve it.
His burning desire was to not be a failure. While he had not been a star at
everything he tried, he managed to struggle out something reasonable, and walk
away without having been an absolute failure. School was not going to be the
first significant failure of his life!
He got a job, enrolled at the local Junior College, and proceeded to prepare for
the process of getting back into school. He did well in his semester “off”
grade-wise, and absolutely destroyed the re-entry tests. A quick interview to
prove that he wasn’t a complete waste of their time and he was back in. He set
himself on fire. If he had just waited, he would still be living in his mom’s
basement. Actually, she’d have thrown him out long before now, but you get my
point. He wanted it. He had a compelling reason. He took action. He had a plan.
He made it happen. He achieved success, and you can as well.
What are your compelling reasons to do the things you do? We know why we eat,
breathe, drink and all the usual things. But where in your life do you want to
succeed? How badly do you want it? What are you willing to do to achieve it?
What pain, suffering, even humiliation are you willing to put up with to achieve
your goal? Make a list of the things at which you have succeeded in one column
and a list of things which you have abandoned in the other. What is the
difference between the two? Can you name the fire which drove each success? Can
you name the fire for any of the things you abandoned?
What drives you? What is your burning desire? What is your compelling reason? If
you have one, success is but a matter of iterations until it is yours. If you
don’t, eventually, you won’t have the will or interest to do it again, and
you will abandon it. What do you want badly enough to light yourself
(metaphorically) on fire?