Have You Seen my Fire?

A new book came out last week by a man named Patrick Bet-David. He is a man that I have followed for many years and his previous book is one of my all-time favorite books. I could spend the next few hours talking about everything that he is involved with or why I like him so much, but it’s 2023, you can go look it up if you feel compelled to do so. I’m about halfway through the book, but I am hoping to finish it in the next few days. When I heard the topic of the book I was intrigued. The title is “Choose Your Enemies Wisely”. I was intrigued for many reasons, but a few reasons are that when I used to play sports, the other team was the enemy. It was clear who you wanted to defeat and why. I wanted to beat them so badly that it lit a fire in me every single game. No motivation needed! But what I have found out is that as an adult, sometimes you have to create an enemy. They have to be a combination of someone who you kind of dislike but also someone that has something you want. The older I get, the harder that is. I don’t want to waste my time on people who I don’t really like and if I want something, I go get it. So, I was hoping that the book would explain how I can find my enemy and get that fire back. So far, I have highlighted a lot of information, but three things have really stood out.  The first thing is that I have never worried about losing someone. Maybe they will go to another job or maybe they will go to another department or shift. Either way, I hope they are happy and find what they are looking for. Most people feel the opposite, they want to hold on to talent like it’s a large amount of money. In the book, he says this quote from Henry Ford, “The only thing worse than training your employees and having them leave is not training them and having them stay”.  I love that, not because it’s proof of what I have been saying for years, but because it shows how important it is to get people trained no matter what. There is no excuse not to get everyone to a certain skill level. But, over the years I have given lots of excuses. One of the other things he talked about was how hard you are working. Too often I find myself with time to spare and I fill it with something that doesn’t really move the needle at all. It’s doing something hoping that time goes by faster not looking to make an impact. In the book he used this line. “Hustle until your haters ask if you’re hiring”. Am I doing anything on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis that anyone else is jealous of or wishes they were a part of? Maybe I’m not going out and doing the bare minimum, but I’m also not doing anything that is catching anyone’s attention. I’m not doing anything on a regular basis that someone can look to a new person and tell them that that’s what they need to be. As I am reading this book, I am looking for an explanation to try and figure out what went wrong and how to fix it. What is something that has changed over the last few years that maybe has put out the fire. Then yesterday I came across these lines in the book, “When I see a stale organization, a place where results have plateaued and people are going through the motions, I can instantly identify the culprit: the leaders have stopped dreaming. When that happens, everyone stops dreaming, and what stands in the place of an organization on a mission is a dull place where people dread coming to work every day”. Is this where I am at? Did I wake up one day and just stop dreaming or thinking about what it could be? Did someone come in and take all my hope away? If that is truly what happened, then I think I found my enemy! I don’t want to walk in at the start of my week and feel like I have no hope of doing something amazing. I don’t want to be a part of a group that just goes through the motions. I don’t want to just count down the days till retirement. I want people to talk about what we are doing in meetings. I want people to question everything decision they make and wonder if it aligns with what I would do in the same situation. I don’t want someone to question everything I do because they think they could have done it better. I want them to question everything they do and wonder if I would approve. I’m going to get that fire back, I promise.