An old war story that’s still relevant today.
Many areas of life can benefit from this classic tale.
The Story Of Burning The Boats
The gist of the story involves an army who decided to capture the enemy’s island.
When the warrior’s boats landed on the island, the commander gave the order to burn the boats.
The purpose of this action was to fix in the soldier’s mind the impossibility of retreat.
The removal of any thought of escape gave the commander’s army an advantage.
The men would either capture the island or die.
The Psychology Behind The Burn The Boats Mentality
Hinging on this particular idea of making a retreat, to save your life, impossible, is the cornerstone of securing your desire – based on one turn of the crank.
By placing your entire life on a single decision, it triggers a certain type of burning desire deep within and gives you that extra edge over the enemy force.
Applying This Metaphor To Life
How this metaphor translates to all areas of life is both simple and complex.
While the vast majority of modern humans won’t encounter an actual life-or-death situation of burning literal boats and staking your actual life on the line, the symbolism extends to just about any area of life requiring a decision that will change everything.
The Build-Up To A Burn Yhe Boats Moment
These types of decision situations don’t readily appear to be too common.
However, the build-up to these decisive moments seemingly involves an extended period of deep contemplation, precise calculation, and vast amounts of preparation.
To show up to this decision unprepared most certainly guarantees demise.
Before beginning deep contemplation, there are key things that must come first.
Burning the boats appears to be the final moment where you cut off all past or previous options and instead, you’ve put all of your eggs in this one basket to take what you desire.
What Triggers This Level Of Desire?
But what specifically triggers this type of desire?
Desires don’t seem to spontaneously appear in the void of empty space.
Yes, there always seems to be a constant and over-abundant influx of rapid and spontaneous desires that sometimes are long-lasting, while others don’t seem to last longer than a single thought impulse.
How does one get to the point of having such a large burning desire to stake your entire life on obtaining your carefully thought-out goal?
Survival As A Core Motivating Factor
Survival of yourself, your family, and society appears to be the strongest baseline motivating factor.
The original boat-burning story involves dangerous warriors who are ready to kill or be killed.
This desire to kill an entire island couldn’t have just spontaneously happened overnight.
It had to have been a long process where this decision was the only option for survival.
The island they were capturing had to have some type of value that warranted such a decisive action.
Understanding The Value Of Your Island
Whether the value was resources or stopping the enemy from harming your village, something very powerful triggered the warriors to seek an offensive battle that they consciously chose to engage in.
Before desire, there must have been a situation that chaotically occurred within the environment that cultivated this desire to put your life on the line.
Maybe the enemy was the first to attack and the warriors were taking action to prevent future harm to their family.
On the darker side, the island could have just been a very valuable strategic war location with many survival resources where they could expand their current empire.
Either way, before deciding to capture the island and before the desire came, there had to have been something of very high value worthy of staking your life on, to claim for yourself.
Burning The Boats In Business
From a more modern standpoint, this story is relevant in business.
Before burning the boats, it’s probably a wise idea to know what you’re getting.
The island that you intend on taking should have enough value that increases the long-term survival of yourself, your family, and society at large.
The Importance Of Strategic Decision-Making
When considering whether or not the time to decide to burn the boats is NOW, it’s probably a good idea to stake your life (or economic freedom) where there is actual hope that your success brings with it more value than where you’re currently at.
This is where precise calculations come into play.
You have cultivated your desire based on precise knowledge of the territory you intend to capture.
With this intense desire that’s spread beyond your own imagination while capturing the hearts and minds of your peers, you begin to mastermind a strategy on how to be absolutely certain you will succeed.
Executing The Plan With Faith And Confidence
Once this desire is overwhelming and consistency in planning out all possible options on how to proceed is nearing completion, faith must be your guiding force.
Even though you have a plan, war and real life, can be much more unpredictable when the time comes to start executing your plan.
Removing all thoughts of retreating from the plan you execute, by burning the boats, thus making retreat impossible, you either die or you get what you came here to get, is only possible if the desire for the value you hope to attain boils down to your belief that this is the right thing to do.
There Is No Other Option
The only thing to do.
There is no other reasonable option than to decide to take massive action towards securing your desire.
Make The Decision And Burn The Boats
Burn the boats and start now!
Find the island and confirm this objective holds enough long-term value for you to prosper.
Once you have absolute faith, total belief, and no doubt, the next step is to choose the date and time to burn the boats.
Finally, once you know the time and date, the only thing you can do is make the decision, without hesitation.
