Patrick Mosher explains how creating a sense of necessity, or "burn the boats" mindset, helps you push through performance slumps and stay committed to your goals. He uses three stories: Cortés burning his ships in 1519, his grandfather in WWI trenches, and a coaching client visualizing serving someone named Amber to show how vivid personal necessity transforms doubt into action.
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Hello, I'm Patrick Mosher, and welcome to the A2B Academy channel, where we explore and discover alternative ways of thinking to drive measurable value in executing our personal and organization strategies. In this channel, we look at where we are right now at point A and try to get to point B. That's as simple as it is. And simple things, you know, it's just a straight line to get from A to B. To get that B might be a dream and/or aspiration or something like that, but we know that we take twists and turns along the way. We get distracted, we procrastinate, you know, we have other influences that come in and get us off that track to get from point A to point B. So in this channel, we look at ironing out, you know, those twists and turns and try to make this as straight as possible. So today, what I'd like to talk about is downturns, defeats, deconversions. And so sometimes we face those. So I ask, have you ever had a time where you launch something and it's not working? And then you make some adjustments and your team makes adjustments and it's still not working. And then you start wondering, those doubts start creeping in and you go, oh, why did we do this to start with? This is so much harder than it was before. And then you start strategizing the undo. And that's what I would call the downturn. And so in the performance curve, you know, we're going along, we get ready for it, we think we're ready to go, and we flip a switch and things go down, which is pretty normal. And then you keep working at it, and then you hope for that twist up, that turn up. And what we're talking about here is, uh-oh, it's a downturn, and you're just troughing out here, and you're just not getting up the other side. This is what we call a defeating, you know, moment. And we have to really think about What do we do in those moments? And today I'm going to bring you a powerful weapon to combat that with, but I'm going to start with a story. Cortés in 1519 landed in Mexico. He had 11 boats. He had about 600 men, probably about 16, 20 horses. I don't know, but I think that's what it was. And, you know, he paints a beautiful picture as they land there. To conquer the land of Mexico. And he speaks to his men. And what I can imagine, just imagine in my head what he said. He goes and says, there's riches beyond your imagination, wonders that no person has ever seen in our Western world. And there's fame for you and popularity that no one has seen before. And so there's an excitement among these 600 men. And he's building them up. He's a great orator. And he says, "Okay, here we are." And then you can imagine with those 600 men, under his breath he says, "Burn the boats." Now the men probably sat there and went, "Yes, this is great. Let's go burn the boats." You know, because they're so enamored with this point B that they're going to get to that they say, "Yes, there is no defeat here. We're not going to turn back. We're not going to go with our heads hung low and go back." and they run and they burn the boats. Now, we use that term a lot, burn the boats, and maybe you've heard that before. But what I can't imagine is that, you know, he was a tyrant of some sort. Maybe he was, but I can't imagine him being a tyrant because it's 600 to 1. If they thought that that wasn't a great idea, I think there might have been a great mutiny there. But somehow I just imagine that he painted a beautiful picture of point B, and he got his men very excited so they willingly burned the boats. And so that powerful weapon, you know, that we're going to talk about is a weapon called necessity. Necessity. Now, you know, that great point B for Cortés was beautiful, it was great, and people were all excited about it, but burning the boats created that point B as a necessary thing to do. And so what's the definition of necessity? It's an unavoidable need or compulsion to do something. An unavoidable need. So when you cut out the status quo where you are and say that's not possible anymore, you do something, right? And so today in our world sometimes we're surrounded with comfortable choices. The status quo is really easy, more desirable than taking a very difficult journey. And so we stop, we procrastinate, and, and we stay in that status quo. So in that sense, necessity makes us uncomfortable, necessity stretches us, and necessity is, is there to help us grow. And I'm sure if you're watching this channel that you want to grow. So what is your burn the ships message. If you have your point B, and I suggest that you write down your point B, and then write down beside it, make a statement of what is your burn the boats message for yourself that says, hey, status quo is not good and not good enough, and I cannot stay in status quo. One thing that I did for myself a lot of times when I was facing some very difficult, you know, journey to overcome I think about my grandfather Mosher who fought in World War I and fought in the trenches. And he was gassed and survived, because I'm here, he survived. And when I face a difficult situation, you know, my burn the boats message to myself is I imagine myself crouching in a trench waiting for a whistle to blow to climb up a ladder that who knows what's going to happen when we have to rush across this field. And so in that moment, those men fought for each other. That was camaraderie that made them climb that ladder and say, look, I'm doing this for the guy next to me. And so I imagine them crouching, look at each other in the eyes, and when that whistle blows, they jump up that ladder and go. And so when I'm facing that value, my burn the boats to say I can't stand where I am is I hear a whistle blow and I jump up that ladder. For the people around me. That's my burn the boats for me personally on a day-to-day basis. When I think about something difficult, I imagine my grandfather Mosher and going up that ladder. So that's my burn the boats. I want to give you another example of a burn the boats message. I was working with one of my clients as a high-performance coach, and she was facing some difficulties of getting started. She had a lot of great ideas. And put some things together. But she just couldn't get it moving for a whole bunch of reasons. You know, the status quo just was more and more comfortable, and she was getting frustrated with that. But one of the things I had her do is I said, "Hey, you know, sit back and think about who are you out there to serve?" And I had her close her eyes and say, "Who are you out there to serve?" And then I had her name that person, that fictitious person, and she named that person Amber. She said, "Yeah, I'm out there to serve Amber." And I said, "Then you need to be able to serve— Amber is waiting for you to serve her." And it's like, whoa, all of a sudden I could see the energy rise in her and she goes, "I need to do this. I need to start tomorrow morning. I'm going to start doing my work to serve Amber." So that was her burn the boats moment. She can't do the status quo because Amber's waiting for her. And I encourage you to think about what is your burn the boats message for your point B? What's that necessity that you have to do to make sure that the status quo is not acceptable and you have to jump to your point B? Well, I hope you enjoyed this, this message today, and I hope this was really helpful for you. That necessity, building that necessity to do what you need to do out in the world. So if you did like this channel, please like this, this, this episode, subscribe to the channel, find 3 or 4 other people to come join us. And I'll leave you with this, as I always do: learn continuously, live your life 100% empowered, and interact authentically. Until next time.
