Light my fire!

I really wasn't nervous about it at all, since many of my classmates had reported doing it years before. In fact, I didn't even think about it at all until Tony Robbins began to talk about it in detail. He said that your basic stove may get up to about six or even seven hundred degrees while the hot coals we were to walk on that evening could be anywhere from twelve to twenty four hundred degrees. That little tidbit of information caught my attention.

The seminar I was attending was called “Unleash Your Power Within,” and it was directed toward breaking through the limitations we have that keep us from attaining our goals. The fire walk was really a metaphor for overcoming fears and perceived obstacles so that success, as defined by our goals, could be achieved. Hey, if you can walk on fire, what can't you do? The key to successfully making it across the course was to bring your self into, what Tony called, a “peak state.” It was also very important to remain focused, since failure to do so could result in burning your feet.

Throughout the weekend, we were asked to identify our goals and the limiting beliefs we have about achieving them; to develop strategies that create a different mindset and physisology to overcome those beliefs; and to create the ability to take ideas and convert them into action. I found it interesting that many of the concepts and strategies discussed were congruent to the types of ideas I share with my practice participants.

Most of us will, at least from time to time, have great ideas about what we want to do to achieve particular goals in our lives. Many times these goals never actually come to fruition. What's usually missing is the action step. The question then becomes, why or what is it that drives us to act? The answer is emotion. It's no coincidence that advertisements are directed toward eliciting our emotions. According to Robbins, researchers at the University of California found that monkeys could learn a task at an astoundingly greater rate when the pleasure centers of their brain were stimulated.

An easy way to achieve this peak emotional state is dancing to an upbeat song. Personally, I like to play the Jackson Five's I Want You Back or Sublime's Love is What I Got, before I affirm my goals for the day and my life. The more we achieve peak states, the more ingrained they become in our systems and the easier it is to re-access them. It's important to note that while people often feel like victims to their feelings, you may choose this state at any moment once you have a strategy to achieve it. Simply put, if you're feeling depressed, put on your favorite song and dance.

Another important step in the Robbins' workshop was for us was to identify how our limiting beliefs have affected our lives up to now and how they would affect us in the future if we didn't change them. Two of the most common and basic limiting beliefs we have are “I'm not good enough” and “I can't be loved.” It's easy to see how these types of beliefs might hinder our ability to achieve life goals. In the workshop, we went through a process of intensely focusing on the effects our limiting beliefs have had for us and really feeling this in our bodies. It was very similar to the “Suffering” stage from Donald Epstein's “Twelve Stages of Healing.” Robbins called this process Creating Leverage for Change. In other words, we must have the impetus for wanting to create a shift in our lives or we probably won't make it happen.

As I went through this process, focusing more and more on the negative outcomes my limiting beliefs have created in my life, I began to experience intense pain in my back. Upon reaching the pinnacle of this feeling, I shifted my physiology back to a peak state and began to visualize exactly what I wanted without the constraints of limiting beliefs. This part was very similar to Epstein's stage four, “reclaiming our power.” I was actually able to clearly visualize my ideal future, something that has eluded me for a majority of my life.

The seminar was a great reminder that we can choose our thoughts, state of physiology and the outcome of our lives. Now whenever I feel a little overwhelmed, I just think back to the moment before I walked across those hot coals, bring myself back to that mindset and realize that I can do anything I decide to do.