General
Discover ways to take an irreversible step in your life by “burning your ships,” to march toward your goal with determination, and to have the courage to embrace change.
Sometimes, not having a way out isn’t necessarily a bad thing—as long as the opportunities keep you motivated… Once you’ve burned your bridges, you have only one option left: win or lose!
When the Spanish explorer Hernán Cortés set foot on the coast of Mexico in 1519, he wanted his army to conquer those lands for Spain. Conditions were extremely difficult; as they advanced inland, they constantly faced adverse conditions and relentless disease. Just as his soldiers were falling into disagreement and considering giving up to return home, he said to his aide: “I want you to go and burn the ships right now.” In doing so, he left his soldiers no other option but to conquer the Mexican coast. If we want to succeed, we must burn the ships! If we truly want to achieve success, we must move forward with all our might in one direction. If there’s no turning back and our only option is to succeed, then we must work with all our might to succeed. So, how do we burn the ships?
Train Your Mind!
Let’s say we’ve set a goal: we’re going to reach our ideal weight! Proclaim this everywhere with phrases like, “I’m going to reach my ideal weight; my goal is to achieve my ideal body!” so that you’ll feel embarrassed if you don’t succeed. There—you’ve burned your bridges; you’ve said it once and for all. With statements like this and others like it, you’ll not only stay motivated and condition your mind but also burn your bridges.
Let me tell you about something that happened to me: In the late 1980s, I went through a rough patch in business and was literally broke. Not only had I lost my own money, but I was also in debt to people left and right, and I thought there was no way back. My relatives told me I could go to France. My only hope was to work there, pay off my debts, and then finally breathe a sigh of relief. We were going to go, but we didn’t have enough money. The money we’d barely managed to scrape together for the plane ticket wouldn’t even get us all the way to France. We flew as far as Austria and then took the train to France. If our relatives hadn’t picked us up at the train station, we wouldn’t have even been able to get to our destination by taxi. Looking at the bigger picture amid all these setbacks, I realized that these experiences had actually steered me toward my true desires: exploring different world cultures…
The Crisis Turned into an Opportunity
Thanks to those challenging circumstances, I had the opportunity to experience a different culture, learn a new language, and take courses that would help me advance in my career. The crisis in my life had turned into a tremendous opportunity. I faced very difficult conditions in France, but I didn’t give up.
I became a student again, went back to university, and studied French Language and Literature at the Sorbonne. I learned a foreign language and developed my career. Meanwhile, I stumbled upon a treasure trove of personal development—my true passion. At that time, personal development wasn’t very well known in Turkey. In the late 1980s, France was experiencing its golden age in this field. There were courses everywhere—yoga, meditation, creative visualization, how to write mantras…
Training sessions were being held, and hundreds of books were being published. In short, I had stumbled upon a treasure that changed my life. But if I hadn’t burned my bridges and seen the crisis as an opportunity, under normal circumstances I could have returned to Turkey a week later. That’s the kind of situation where you fight—you do everything in your power to succeed.