Burn The Boats
It all started with what seemed to be a great job offer with a friend of mine who was venturing into a business of his own. I was at the time planning to leave my employment as things were not going as smoothly as I had hoped. I was working with the promotion arm of an international advertising agency where I had to coordinate and monitor promotional projects, and conduct training for promoters for several brands. My department was putting in 25 hours a day 8 days a week. In my two years with the company I never had an opportunity to take any real holidays and so I was on a head on collision to burn out. My new employment was offering me a 30% increase in wage and 60% less hours. It was to be a meditation gymnasium or so to speak with a rather interesting approach combining old and new methods of achieving Nirvana. I thought (and still do) that it had potential but unfortunately things did not work out as planned. First like many young and inexperience entrepreneurs who venture into business he swore with absolute certainty that he had three investors pumping in close to RM200K. Much to everyone’s surprise we never saw the initial capital, the investors or Hailey’s Comet that year. Not wanting to loose any dignity after announcing his great plans for world domination; he proceeded to open office without any real funds. Like most business people of today, their main objective in starting a business is to be in control, to be the “Boss-man”, "da Big Kahuna". The office took two months to get into gear and when it finally did we had no funds to proceed for even the simplest classifieds advertisement to hire a sales team. The product was never really conceived as he had a different structure to it every two days and although he was advised to do so in order for Marketing to promote the product, he never came into grips with reality. So everyday he comes in at about lunchtime, gets as much work done as the cleaning lady on a Friday afternoon and leaves at 6pm for a so-called important business meeting at a local Indian restaurant. Just the same, everyone was expected to take him seriously while he insisted that his somewhat non-existing sales team sell imaginary products to real customers. Every marketing plan that was agreed on was perfect until datelines crept up his back and then like an epiphany he would discover a whole new approach – this eventually became a weekly affair. This made marketing about as useful as watching a pair of dogs sniff at each other’s butts. About mid-February, my ex-boss from the previous company offers me a job to run a promotion project that was not going as smooth as he had anticipated. Due to yet another unforeseen financial circumstance coupled together with the lack of expectation management that too was cut-short of its run.
It was in this period when it was brought to my attention that I should start a company of my own and at about that same time I came to realise there were two major epochs in my life which eradicate a large portion of my cosmetic friends. The first was during the reign of my Cleopatra that took me down like she did Julius Caesar and Mark Anthony in 1991. The second time was during my recent financial destitution that I had previously mentioned. During the second epoch, I have had to approach friends for some financial help until I got back on my own two feet. Most of them got very busy very fast - déjà vu. I had to seek for alternatives and I had to find it fast.
Over the next two years I had managed to get myself into a reading habit – a habit not very common of Malaysians. I got into reading self-development books and I discovered that from one book to the next there is not much difference. I was warned about this by friends who were trying to save me from the onslaught of brain-washing that these books supposedly took. Imagine that, a book that controls your mind. I mean – what would a book command of you? As I read these book that repeat themselves, I also realised that as many friends I had known who had ever placed their ocular implants on these taboo books just as many have never practiced anything they read; if at all they had read them. From books I eventually evolved to audio material, and that was a short drive to seminars.
In all this, one story caught my attention.
In the sixteenth century General Hernando Cortés left Spain with an army of less than 600 to explore the Yucatan Peninsular. He was told of great treasures held by the Aztecs but they had a formidable army. He knew what he wanted and he knew where to find it. Now, there were many who had tried to conquer this nation for their gold and just as many had failed. Having only a small naval force, Cortés understood that he had to change his approach in order to achieve his goal. So when they beached the Mexican shores, General Cortés stood before his people just as many Generals had done in the past before a great battle to give an uplifting speech before battle. But he also knew that a great motivational speech was not going to be enough to defeat a strong Aztec nation on their home ground. So, he said three words that would change the outcome of this battle and forever etch his name into history. He said, “Burn the Boats!” Yes, he had his boats torched. “Why?” you would ask. Well if Cortés’s army had lost the battle they would not need their boats anyway. However, if they won the battle they could build new boats or they could stay and reap the fruits of their victory. Burning the boats gave them no choice but to win the battle cause they could not run. And they did win.
Where am I going with all this?
After spending countless hours on self-development book, motivational seminar recordings and a small dive into the biographies of the successful, I have discovered that they all preach the same thing. Now why would so many
successful people in unison preach something that does not work for over the last several centuries? Maybe it is how they keep the masses in check so that they stay rich and we stay mediocre and poor – a conspiracy that spans the books from Alexander the Great to Napoleon Bonaparte, from Stalin to JFK, from Ghandi to Bill Gates and from the White House to the lecture Halls of Robert T. Kyosaki. They were all in it. Come on. Get real. They are successful because they had a set of principle that they followed without compromise. A set of principles that is different from ours. There is a very clear line that divides the successful from the mediocre. And the only reason we are where we are is because we covet our existence so much that we never see the big picture. Those materials brought to my attention a habit that I thought was only distinguishable of my own nature and that was embarking on a journey of change but never achieving it. It was frustrating. I know many people who start a diet they never follow through, or an exercise regime that falls short of a ship wreck. We talk about changing our career paths to get better paying jobs and better opportunities but we end up right where we started. Smokers constantly claim that it is impossible to quit smoking because they have tried and failed miserably. Friends saying that they’d love to develop a reading habit so they’d learn new things but can’t seem to get past page ten. I have had that “No Way Out” conversation with too many people.
Someone once quoted that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing repeatedly and expecting different results. Understand this – the laws of physic do not change. If you throw a ball into the air it, will come back down – it’s the law of gravity. Throwing it again and again will never keep the ball afloat. You have to change your approach. You need to leave behind the things that you had known and learn new things. Think about it – not more than a century ago, the idea of sending a man into space was considered unreal and childish but today we are planning manned missions to Mars. My teachers used to tell me that I could achieve anything I want if I only set my mind to it. For many years I misunderstood that, and so have many of you. Most of us just think and dream of the things that we want but we hardly ever think about how we are doing it – setting a course to your destination. Most of us set our minds on the things we want (the destination) but never set our minds to it (the path or method). We don’t want to change what we are comfortable doing on a daily basis – rushing to work, chasing deadline, kissing asses, cursing drivers, getting drunk, crashing cars. If you want great things, you have to do great things. Do things differently and you will see different results. That may even include changing the people you spend most of your time with. I’m not saying that you have to leave your friends behind, you might but you don’t have to. Ask yourself, “Who is it that I spend most of my time with and what influence do they have on me?” Yes, thinking about it may sometimes result in leaving certain friends behind, changing your work environment, moving house, or even moving to another city. If you actually spend the time to think about what is important in your life and not flock to the bars like little sheep to their shepherd’s call, you may find a need for drastic changes. So drastic that you may need to ensure a “No U-Turn” sign is firmly placed in order to force yourself to do something different, something that is not normal of you, something that might even scare you but most importantly – stick with it until it is done.
“Success is the gradual realisation of a worthy ideal” – Earl Nightingale
Change will not happen over night but it will happen. It could take weeks to annihilate a bad habit and develop new better ones but you will need to get on with what is necessary not what you have been doing for the last two thousand years. Give up that evening drink at the bar and spend it jogging at the park. Instead of eating fried, oily and hi-carb meals at the mamak, try some wholemeal bread, a thin spread of butter, tomatoes, lettuce, and two slices of ham twice a week. Pick up a book and spend fifteen minutes reading it everyday before you sleep. Cut back on those cigarettes gradually. If all else fails – tell your friends that you’d buy them dinner at La Bodega for a week if you don’t achieve your goal in a given time.
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