Continuing (and concluding) our trip through Steve Chandler’s wise brain (and great book, Reinventing Yourself), let’s talk about campfires. Campfires? Yep. Campfires. So… You’re out camping. It’s night time. You light a fire. It keeps you warm. You wake up the next morning. The fire is out. You’ll need to light another fire tonight to get warm again. Now, do you complain about the fact that you need to create another fire? Or, do you just accept that that’s how it is? Unless you pretty much exclusively speak Victimese, you accept that reality and simply make another fire, right? Well… Steve tells us that the “human spirit” is JUST like that campfire. You need to re-light it EVERY SINGLE DAY. Most people don’t like that fact. They want their fire to burn all day every day from the moment they wake up until the moment they fall asleep (with pleasant dreams included as well)—with as little effort as possible. That’s called entitlement. You can also call it wanting to be exonerated from all future effort. As it turns out, Phil Stutz says almost exactly the same thing. Only the metaphor he uses in our chats is that of a chair. He says that when you build a chair on the physical or material plane of life, it’s there the next day. BUT… (And this is another big “but”!!) On the spiritual plane, that chair you built today WON’T be there tomorrow. You need to get back to work RE-BUILDING it. Every day. Whether you like it or not. Kinda like the campfire of the human spirit. Today’s +1. At the end of the day today, use the wood from the chair you built to fuel the campfire you need to build every night—knowing that you’ll need to build both again tomorrow morning. And… Know that when we really get this, we’re nearly invincible. Why? Well, we stop complaining when we inevitably feel a little off and simply get to work doing the things we KNOW will help us feel great. THAT is the source of ultimate confidence. And it’s ours. Here’s to your comfie chairs that act as kindling for your warm fires!
