Igniting Your Inner Fire: The True Starting Point for Goal Achievement

Your failure to start is your failure to finish. I could end this blog here because it’s literally that simple. Although what does failure to start actually mean?

Getting older has some valuable benefits. One of the key benefits is the beauty of hindsight and experience. Life is such an incredible teacher if you are awake enough to really hear her teachings.

We talk often about great teachers, great motivators and their innovative ideas, but essentially there is nothing that is new. Most things are absorbed and regurgitated with an individual spin. What is the difference between these agitators for change, and those who feel stuck?

The change agents simply started. Life kept dishing up the lessons, and they kept listening whilst staying out of judgement, remaining awake in that process, and life did the rest.

If you feel like you are banging your head against the wall, it’s because you are not listening. Many people think they are on their way to their goals because they are putting in a ton of effort.

You’ve heard all the memes, don’t quit, be the lion, chase your dreams, never let go etc. After you’ve heard all the pumped-up rhetoric and you spin your wheels, “efforting to get there”, it gets tiresome, loses its juice, feels empty, and apathy sets in. An empty shell is now chasing a shadow on the wall. The feeling of banging your head against the wall is the analogy most would draw.

So the thing is, you don’t need to jump on a plane and fly to the states to spend 6 days with Tony Robbins, pumping yourself up. Not that there is anything wrong with that if it gets you moving, but eventually, the motivation has to start burning inside you again, as it once did, not outside of you. No one else can take responsibility for your fire. You lit it, you have to keep it burning.

You need to follow the threads back and find out where the fire ignited in the first place. What was the feeling that took place in your body, gut and heart, that set fire to this goal? Because in the feeling of banging your head against the wall, if you look, if you really look, you’ll find out that you’ve lost contact with that initial feeling, and the fire has gone out.

If you really want something to manifest, you have to get good at wanting it. You can’t want something with thought, it’s not strong enough. Why? Because thinking is an illusion. It takes you to a place where you imagine yourself successful; you daydream about it. It’s the ego wanting to add more to itself. It’s not strong enough motivation, and life knows it.

You have to stay in flow with the goal. Be still, visualise it, feel it, taste it, and then start whilst holding those things in place, and when things are toughest, connect to those places even more.

Every time you get kicked in the guts or slip backwards, ask yourself “what is the lesson?”

Never give up? Sorry, unless you stay in touch with your heart and the fire in your belly, you will have to stop, you’ll have no choice. Because you can’t keep a fire burning by pouring water on it. Once it’s gone out, you are wasting your time sitting in front of it thinking it’s going to keep you warm.

What’s the point of all this?

“Stop banging your noggin against the wall. It’s not about the goal, it never was!”.

When you look into the initial feelings of the goal, you will see and feel it clearly.

It’s all about “YOU”! Your fire, desire, heart and soul.

If you are reading this and think, “oh this is more of that hippy type rhetoric”, that’s fine. Go back to sleep, but know you are going back to hitting your noggin against that wall.

When we were kids we all had dreams, and we gave them up to settle for reality. Reality is bland and life is tough, three squares, a BBQ, a beer and a 9 – 5 job is what we do, right?

Bulls..t! It’s what we settle for because we lose touch with our own inner fires and talents. Life is beautiful if you are happy where you are, by all means, enjoy it to the fullest if you are not feeling a pull.

If however you are sitting on top of a powder keg and deep inside it’s calling you out, or it has called you out and it now feels flat because you feel you have failed, it’s because you never really started.

How do I start towards this goal? Fill your space with your own essence. Not your thoughts, your essence. Let that be the driver behind all you do, even if it seems risky. Go out on a limb and do what your essence tells you to do, trust your gut. When it goes pear-shaped, pick yourself up, connect back to the essence, fan the flames of your own desire, and pick up where you left off with the lessons you have learnt.

If the steps towards your goals have been full of thought, judgement and effort, then you have failed to truly start your journey. The fire is smouldering; no wonder you are feeling cold.

You cannot superimpose yourself onto a goal. You cannot project yourself outwards to a goal, you have to attain the goal as part of your own experience. This is because you are the one which the goal is going to go through if you do attain it. Notice that sentence; it’s going through you, not the other way around. There is no goal without you. In fact, there are no goals at all without you. You are the common dominator in everything.

It’s all coming from within you, everything does. So why does life have you banging your head against the wall? Because it’s hoping one of those whacks is going to wake you up and make you realise that there is only one. There can only ever be one – You!