Learning to Light a Fire Under Your Ass

Written by Paul Piotrowski - Friday, June 5th, 2009

Lately I’ve been chatting about goals and success with a few other Bloggers and Affiliate Marketers, as well as people in other lines of business, and I found a similarity amongst those that are succeeding in their businesses.

I found that the people who are having the most success in life are those that have learned how to light fires under their asses, metaphorically speaking. Somehow at some point they learned what motivates them in life and they use it to get themselves to do more than “the norm”.

At the same time, the people who I know in business that are having the exact same results this year as they did last year are not challenging themselves at all, choosing instead to stay comfortable.

Each person has a unique set of values in their lives, and those values drive what keeps us going. The things that are highest on our values list we will always get done, no matter what. The things that are lowest on our values list, we will always avoid and procrastinate. The things in the middle are usually the ones that we flip-flop on throughout our lives.

Learning to light a fire under your ass is all about linking things that are lower on your hierarchy of values to things that are higher on the list. For example, when I wrote the blog post “I’m Going on a Journey“, I talked about my previous struggles with making health a priority of mine. Whenever it comes to building wealth vs. health, it seems that for me my health always ends up taking a back-seat compared to the success of my businesses.

So, in order to change that, I had to link getting healthier to improving my business. One way was to publicly announce my goals and to merge my business milestones with my health milestones. Doing that forces me to come up with creative ways to accomplish success both financially and health wise. I knew that by declaring my milestones publicly it would light a fire under my butt and motivate me to push harder to reach the next milestone, and that’s exactly why I did it.

What about you? What goals do you have for the next 90 days, or for the rest of this year? The year is half over, but there is still another half left, so why not challenge yourself to take a stand and do something remarkable?

How could you light a fire under your own ass? Would joining some kind of club, or organization help you to do that? What about hiring a personal coach? What about a friendly competition with a friend?

Don’t be afraid to challenge yourself. It’s the only way we grow in life. Also, I have found that if we create challenges in our lives that force us to grow, then life tends to support us. However, if we try to hide in the comforts of “status quo”, never challenging ourselves, then life will create challenges for us to overcome and oftentimes they’re nowhere near as fun as the ones we could have created for ourselves.

So if someone is going to be lighting a fire under your ass somewhere in your life anyway, why not do it yourself? You’ll have more control, more fun and get to set up your own rules.

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Comments:

Matias says:

June 6, 2009 at 3:46 pm

Great post Paul, thanks a lot!!! I have a similar situation than yours but inverse, for me taking care of my health and be fit its an absolute “must”, but when it comes down to bussiness and wealth building its a “should” so i tend to procastinate. I like your way to link them together. Any other tips?
I really look forward to see other ways to raise the value in our scale of some areas that we would like to turn into “musts” and take action.
have a nice weekend
Mat

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Matias says:

June 8, 2009 at 12:24 pm

Thats really interesting and i never thought of that one Paul. Thanks a lot!! Will do the excercise and see what it pops up
Cheers

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Samuel Van Der Wall says:

June 9, 2009 at 2:05 am

Having our first child lit a fire for me. It made me care about things that I previously didn’t care about as much, like our house, where we live, and the job I am in.

One good example is that I hate yard work. But now that I have a daughter, I can’t imagine her playing in a weed infested, rocky, desert-like backyard. Now yard work is actually really easy for me, because it has a point for me. I have a reason to make my front and back yards not suck.

Honestly, the economy has been a driver for me as well. I saw the price of my home drop by 50%. Now people who are around me are buying houses twice as big for less money. It is frustrating because you spend so much time planning, trying to make good financial decisions. And then something like this comes along and you see people who are irresponsible or lucky being rewarded with better things. That definitely lights a fire.

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Lucy says:

April 9, 2010 at 10:15 am

Hey Paul,
Can you give me some advice as to how to light a fire under my procrastinating ass? I can’t believe I am reading this as I have a 10 page paper due in 3 hours.
I’m a goal-oriented person. I appear to have my life under control. I go to a prestigious college and look put-together most of the time. Am good humored and outgoing. Underneath however, I have a severe problem. I’ve tried drugs, and combating the problem in all sorts of ways. Yet everyday is a race to catch-up with the things that I didn’t get done on time in the first place. As a college student, consequences to not turning in an assignment doesn’t phase me–time and time again I’ve be able to manipulate around the system and I’m still alive and standing, so it recurs. But I don’t have low-standards. Rather, the very opposite.
Have I not found my interest? What makes the difference between those items that are higher on my priority list and those that are lower? I do have the answer to this: people are counting on me/that there are people to impress would be characteristics of those items that are higher.
But why is it not enough to just do it/things for myself?

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Marlene Hurta says:

August 6, 2010 at 7:11 am

thank u so much for this good article

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Ross Friendly says:

October 5, 2010 at 9:11 pm

Will be back soon, lovely post, thanks again have bookmarked you!

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Paul Piotrowski says:

June 8, 2009 at 9:49 am

@Matias: One way to help you link WEALTH to HEALTH is to sit down and answer this question:

“How does building wealth and financial independence help me to achieve an even greater level of health and vitality in life?”

Write out 50-100 answers to this question. Just go super-quick, whatever pops into your head. It doesn’t mean you have to do the things you list, but just write out options of how it could help. Here, I can start you off with a few:
1. Could hire a personal trainer.
2. Could consult with numerous nutritionists to even more finely refine my diet.
3. Could travel to see Deepak Chopra’s seminar.
4. Could afford to take one week off every month to relax, rejuvenate, meditate and recharge my soul.
5. Could afford a weekly/daily massage.

etc. Just get creative and list as many ways that Wealth = Health as you can. It’s not easy, but you’ll know you’re done when you feel a “shift” inside.

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