Burn the Boats: Toss Plan B Overboard and Unleash Your Full Potential

Burn the Boats: Throw Plan B Overboard and Unleash Your Full Potential

IIf you’re looking to expand your thinking, then look no further Burn the Boats: Throw Plan B Overboard and Unleash Your Full Potential by Matt Higgins.

For those of us who have always heard, “There’s always a Plan B,” Burning boats may sound reckless. What Higgins says is that “you can’t win if you give yourself the option to lose.” Do you need to process the risk? Absolutely. Ask yourself, “What’s the worst that could happen?” If that lasts, the boats will be burned.

To do something well, you have to give yourself no escape route, no chance of turning back. You throw away your backup plans and you push forward, no longer distracted by the endless ways in which we block our own success.

Essentially it comes down to: why should we hesitate? Burning boats is about overcoming that voice in your head that is holding you back—creating doubt. It’s easy to think you’re not good no matter what you’ve achieved or where you are. “Before we burn the boats, we must believe in who we are, without fear of falling to the forces that are gunning for our demise.”

You will always have detractors. This can be useful where you encounter resistance. They are often negative because they lack knowledge about what you do. They are jealous because your success makes them feel bad. Again, we allow our insecurities and negative self-talk to destroy us before we even begin.

Our weaknesses and shames become our strengths. “Whatever you worry about that is holding you back is part of your story. Everyone has parts of their story that they think about, hide from the world, or feel ashamed to talk about. But when you realize that we are all keep those kinds of secrets inside, their power over you diminishes.”

What do you carry—things in your life that you repeat over and over again—that make you feel lighter when you reframe them and throw them away?

Leaning on your differences—those things that make you unique—will help you hedge your bets. Researchers at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania found that just thinking about a Plan B can reduce team performance and motivation. “You don’t waste your mental energy trying to find a way out or an alternative plan. All your energy must be directed towards your goal or you will not achieve it.”

There are behaviors and thoughts that strongly influence our outcomes. The wrong partners can derail you. And sometimes, you won’t be the one leading the company forward. Maybe you are the Visionary, and you need a good operator—a kind of Catalyst—to make it happen. When you want to give up on an idea, you have to ask yourself, is this idea that I’m tired of, or is it time to bail? “Familiarity breeds contempt. We are burned and sick and tired of hearing our own stories, even though most of the world has never heard them. You need to structure your big bets in life to give yourself time to get it right.

And you should place big bets, not incremental ones just to play it safe. “If it’s worth going in at all, then I’m going to make the case that it’s worth going in at all.” When we are afraid, we want to slow down and take small steps instead of giant leaps. “But all that has done is lengthen our journey and give us more and more opportunities to come back.”

The idea of incremental progress is just our attempt to impose order on the chaos of life and reduce success to some kind of visible formula. Pay your bills and get rewarded for upward mobility. In fact, the biggest spoils usually go to those who refuse to submit to a typical road map.

To make big leaps, Higgins said, “find people who are better than you at everything one might need to do, and embrace what makes them incredible.”

Through the examples of people who have had to cross that barrier of doubt and fully commit to their potential, you will find parallels in your own experience. It’s all on the pages of Burn the Boats. I think every worry, fear, crisis, or doubt you might experience is reflected in the many examples Higgins shares. When we see ourselves in their life stories, we feel that if they can do it, so can we.

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