The Mind Body Project
The Mind Body Project
Sit & Talk: Burn The Boats
What happens when you remove the exit and choose to move anyway? We take the famous “burn the boats” idea and make it practical, turning a mythic story into clear steps you can use to beat fear, stop hedging, and commit to real change. Fear doesn’t disappear when you cut off retreat—options do. That single shift can transform your posture from tentative to decisive and focus your energy on the only path that matters: forward.
We start with the core lesson from the Cortez narrative, then translate it to modern life: the boats look like “just in case” habits, closets full of fallback sizes, negative friends, and a schedule packed with excuses dressed up as reasons. From there we dig into four levers for momentum. First, personal power: no one drives your thoughts but you, and failure becomes a staircase when you use each misstep as data. Second, approval detox: when you quit seeking permission, the right people gravitate toward your lane and the wrong ones quietly drift away. Third, decision over delay: action creates the feedback that lets you course-correct; you can’t steer while parked. And fourth, progress over perfection: embrace a learn-do loop so you can start before you have the whole map.
Along the way, we share stories and analogies that make the ideas stick, from closets to runway turns, and we keep the focus on practical ways to start today. You’ll hear how to reframe time as priorities, why “try” keeps you stuck while “decide” changes your stance, and how small wins rebuild confidence when doubt runs loud. If you’re ready to swap safety nets for real traction, this conversation invites you to pick one boat—any size—and let it go.
If this resonated, follow the show, share it with someone who needs a nudge, and leave a quick review to help others find it. Then tell us: what’s the first boat you’re burning?
Welcome to Sit and Talk. Thank you so much for joining us today. I appreciate you taking a little time to sit and visit with us as we talk about burning your boats. And as you join our live sit and talk, thank you for being here, and I look forward to sharing today's topic with you. So we will get started. So we are going to talk today about burn the boats. So uh there's a story that goes that Cortez he set sail for the Yukon Peninsula. And on this peninsula was the richest treasure that there had ever been. But it had been held by the same army for over 500 years, 600 years. And so he was going towards this peninsula to take this treasure. Um, nobody had taken it for over 600 years. So he he takes off. Cortez has about 11 ships, uh, has 500 soldiers and about 100 sailors. And about halfway through this voyage, the soldiers and sailors they start to get fearful of the enemy. Because, I mean, what would you think? If you're going somewhere where that army has never been beaten or hasn't been beaten over 600 years, you would start to get a little bit fearful of that you couldn't do it. So they start feeling this way. And so when they reach the shore, Cortez gathers all of his men, and so most of his men thought, you know, that they were about to pack up and go home. But instead, is what Cortez tells him is he said, we're gonna burn the boats. Like literally set them on fire, we're gonna torture them, we're gonna burn them. He said, because if we go home, we're going home in their boats. And so they burned the boats. They were either gonna die on that island or sail home in the boats that they took from that army, and they defeated the army, went home in the army's boats, and took all their treasures. So basically, you know, we might think that all the fear was gone when they burned the boats. But really, what was what was burned up? It wasn't their fear wasn't gone, the fear wasn't cremated, but their options were. So their option was, are we gonna lose? Because if we go in, there's no way we're leaving unless we get their boats. We can't retreat, we can't sail away, we can't do any of that. So, in order for us to get home, we have to defeat this army and take their boats. So they reduced their options. They read, you know, this is the only option, and we don't want to die, so this is the option. So, really, it it more or less took their fear or you know what what do I say? If you ever hear, if you tell me you're gonna try to do something, what would my response be to you if you've heard about what I think about the word try? Well, that means you're setting yourself up for failure. That means you're setting yourself up for failure. If you say I I will try, that means you're giving yourself an option that it may not happen. When you say, I decided to, that means that there is no other option. Obstacles, roadblocks, things may get in your way, but you now have decided that you're gonna make a difference, you're gonna do something different, whatever it is. They decided they didn't say, Well, we're gonna try to win. No, they said we are gonna decide that we're gonna win. And so you may think, well, we're not pulling up to an island uh or a peninsula with all these army and people with deadly weapons trying to kill us. So, what are our boats? Our boats may look like if you're at home now, you might be able to walk into your closet and see one of your boats. And what is that? It is those clothes in the very back that range in sizes from maybe small to large to extra large. They range in size. Those are our boats because we leave them because, well, I lost weight, but what if that weight comes back? I'm gonna save that for just in case. It's for those. Well, you know, this these clothes I bought are feeling a little bit tighter, so I'm just gonna move up to the bigger ones I have in my closet, and and I'll and I'll get back down to those ones not feeling so tight in a little bit. You know, when I have some more time. So burning our boat there means we get rid of those clothes. Once we're done with them, we get rid of them. We don't need them anymore. Maybe our boats in our life are our negative friends. Well, you know, maybe it's quotation mark friends. They're always negative, they're always trying to bring us down. They're always, you know, we all have those friends or those acquaintances that no matter how great life is for us, they want to bring us down. I mean, tip and why is that typically because it makes them feel better. Um, maybe it's our excuses. Uh again, we talked about last week. We talked about, we call them reasons. Um, we have all these reasons, um, but really they're excuses. Um, so we burn those excuses. Um, you know, when I sent out the text about uh any, you know, comments, feedback, anything like that, somebody texted me back and said, Well, one of the things people tell them is, well, you know, all the times this don't fit my schedule, or I don't have time. And she replied with, and you know what we all think about we don't have enough time. It's about priorities because we all have the same time. It's excuses. We have to burn those excuses. Sometimes it's lack of confidence. We have to get rid of that. We have to burn that up. So we're not literally setting things on fire, but just as they did, we're gonna get rid of them. So we're gonna talk about four ways to overcome fear and to burn our boats per se, whatever those boats are in our life. So, fear the defin the thing I like for it, well, I can't think of it's when each letter has a name. I can't think of what that is. Anagram. Thank you. I knew a teacher would know that. Anagram. So that's gonna make me sound really smart. If I can just remember that anagram. I probably should write that down. I'm gonna write that down, anagram. Because if I write it down, I'll remember it. So the anagram for fear is what I like is face everything and rise. Because when we do face those things, and there's another anagram for it, which is face everything and run. And a lot of times fear does cause that. If we face it and we run, but courage, as we talked about, what is courage? It's not the absence of fear, but it is having the fear and moving forward. So it's facing everything and rise, and that's really it's that is turning that fear into courage. So one the one of the first ways we can overcome the fear and and burn our boat is we use personal power. Who who do I say all the time is responsible for you? Who's the one responsible? You you absolutely you yourself, yourself. Does anybody have control, like physical, actual pull of strings control over your thoughts? No, nobody does. You have you have that personal power. People can invade your space and they can do harm to your physical body, you know. But really, I mean, and again, there are ways that people can control what how you think different things, but ultimately they can't like take your brain and play with all your thoughts and rearrange them. They can't do that like a bunch of Lego blocks, they can't do that, so we have that. And we've talked about before about how we dwell on the worst case scenario, and when we have fear, don't we do that? Don't we dwell on the worst thing that can happen? That fear takes us to all sorts of things, um, and we dwell on that. And when we when we talk about personal power, how do we use our failures? Do we use them um to knock us down or do we use those to build us up? So you think of failures, you know, if we think of failures as a stepping. If you talk to somebody successful, if I talk to any of you, if I if I tell you, hey, name your successes for me, you're gonna have to think a little bit. You'll you'll probably name off two or three, four really quick. Maybe it's family, maybe it's business, maybe it's a couple other things. You'll name them real quick. What if I tell you to name your failures for me? You'll probably just rattle them off. Like if I told you to write down 10 failures you've had in your life, I mean, you you'd be done in no time. Because we we and when we're when we think about our personal power, we have to turn those uh failures which we might think ruinous into they build us. So we think of each failure um as a stepping stone. So if we have a failure here and then another failure, and then another failure, and then another failure, what is that building? That's building a stepping stone or a staircase to success. If you're successful in any area of your life, think about all the failures you've had. Probably the first thing you did didn't turn out successful. You didn't go, man, I just have the golden touch. There has to be some failures to figure out what didn't work. And really, if you think about it, the quickest way to success, the faster we fail forward, the quicker we can be successful. And that is in any area of our life. When we look at, and that's using our personal power, our personal mindset to go from it, this failure ruined me, to it can build. Because think about the the quicker you fail, the quicker you fail, the quicker you're gonna build that staircase or those stepping stones to success, whether it's moving up to success, or if it's stepping stones, it's the pathway to success. Um, and that can be success in relationships, it can be success in job, it can be success in personal growth, it can be success financially, it can be in all kinds of things. So we have to really turn that from you know, ruin to build, or not dwell on worst-case scenario. It's our personal power. How to and we use that to burn some of those boats, to burn that boat of failure, of well, this is just my life, this is just the way I go, this is the way it is. So burning the boat of from going from a victim, and we all know those people that's always a victim, to a victor. Like, I mean, I can grow from this, I can learn from this. This can change me. Because does anything change you that doesn't challenge you? Typically, it has to be a challenge to change you. You get fitter if you don't breathe hard from time to time. Not not usually if you can do to do to do, typically you don't get fitter. Um the next one, so we have to use that personal power. The next one is we have to stop looking for approval. Because you know, we might hesitate what we might post on social media because well, what will people think? We might hesitate to say something because what will my friends think? Because everybody doesn't have to support us. You know, we may be getting rid of all those clothes, and you might think somebody might say, Well, that's a waste of money. You just you bought all those clothes and they're nice, but you don't need their approval because if we keep them, what happens? We keep that it's it's trying, we go back to that option, it's available. Because as I mentioned, when when we were doing walk and talk, when we're actually walking, you know, as I looked at people's shoes, they all had you know three or four different brands, and some of them were the same. So some of them had Hokas, some of them had Adidas, some of them had Brooks. And, you know, one person might say, you know, this is the best shoes I've ever had. And they have some Hokus on. The person next to them goes, Brooks, that that's not the best shoe. This is the best shoe. But, you know, they don't they don't know because they haven't walked in your shoes. And somebody with Hocus might go, I don't really like the Brooks because they're a little snug, uh, they hit my toe at the end when I run, it makes me have a black toenail and so it falls off. But if it's somebody that hasn't ever been in those, they can't they can't say, you know, we shouldn't be looking for their approval because they never tried it. They don't know our feet, they don't know how they fit in the shoe, they don't know how they work. As I shared a story the other day about Caleb. Caleb, when he was little, the kid was the hardest person to buy shoes for because you take him shoe shopping and you try it on a gazillion different pairs of shoes, and he's like, Yeah, that's fine, yeah. And he could never tell when his end of his toes were hitting the shoe. It was the weirdest thing. And so, you know, we said, Hey, do those shoes fit okay? Oh, yeah, they fit great, they fit great. Well, then come to find out, you know, we look at his shoes after a while and go, Well, his toe's about to poke out the top because it is crushing the end. Well, he did this for a long time. We're not talking about months, we're talking about for years. And so now as a doll, he's 27, 26, 27. Now he has some problems with his toes, you know. Now they kind of cross over, you know, they're not the best because of that. He was looking for approval to say, you know, you know, okay, get this shoe. When in fact, his foot in the shoe wasn't a proper fit. So he was looking for approval, but yet it damaged him. And and the same is true for us. Sometimes we look for other people's approval and we want that approval, and we don't notice, just as he didn't notice, over the years, there's some things that will affect us for the long term. You know, him seeking our approval is to say, okay, get those, without him actually telling us the truth, caused him some physical things that he still deals with. And the same is not, I mean, exactly the same with us. We seek approval, and when doing that, we have some of those things that as adults affect us, later in life affect us, they make a difference. So we have to stop looking for that approval. Um, we hear all the time about being authentically you, and that's a good thing. But we also have to understand that being authentically you is not just trying to be different for different sake, it's being authentically us because that's really who we are. And if we're constantly looking for approval of certain people, then maybe we don't need those certain people around. One of the biggest lessons I learned at Synergy was that we will attract the right people, and we will the other people that aren't meant for us will run away. And the same is true as here. So when people don't come, that doesn't hurt my feelings because we're not right fit. And that's meant to happen, and that's totally okay. And the same thing is true with us. Not everybody's gonna like you, not everybody likes me. I know it's hard to believe, but that's just the way it is, and that's okay because we are not meant for everybody, and we're not everybody's cup of tea. So we have to stop looking for that approval. We and and so that means we burn some of those boats. We distance ourselves from some of those relationships, whether it's friends, maybe sometimes it's family. We try to distance those. We burn those boats because we don't necessarily need your approval to be successful. Uh, the third thing is sometimes we don't make a decision because we're afraid that we're gonna regret it. Chances are sometimes we might. As we talked about in the the first one, is when we have failures. Sometimes uh we don't want to have a failure, so we don't do it because we might regret it. But the thing is with decisions is if we make it and we fail, which direction are we moving? Backwards or forwards? Hopefully forwards. Now, you may make a decision and it feels like a backwards decision. But did you using that personal power, did you learn from that? And if you did, then it that is what we call failing forward. So failing forward is trying to make those decisions and then it's moving you closer to your goal. And the thing is about when we make a decision, even if we regret it sometimes, we are in forward motion, and when we're in forward motion, we can course correct. If a plane is on the runway and wants to go to Cincinnati and never leaves the runway because they're worried about making a wrong turn, will they ever get to Cincinnati? No, no, if they're worried about getting to Cincinnati and they leave the runway, but yet they're headed to Mexico, can they still get to Cincinnati? Yes. Eventually. Eventually, yeah, eventually, they might just have to make a big circle in the Gulf of America or Gulf of Mexico, whichever you whichever you want to call it. Um, but they can course correct. And so we are no different. If if we sit on the tarmac and don't ever move, if we sit in a recliner and don't ever move, if we sit in our chair, if we just stand idly by and don't ever move, we will never get to that destination that we would like to get to. Um, if we start moving that way, um, we can course correct. If you're in the recliner and you get thirsty and you start to head toward the refrigerator, and a kid or a dog gets in your way, you will you'll typically go around them. Or if your husband are standing in the middle, or a kid standing in the middle, you'll go around them. So you course correct to get to your destination, and otherwise, if you stay sitting there, you're gonna regret it even more because you think, man, I'm still thirsty, I'm still hungry, nobody's bringing me any food. Um, so uh, and when we have those things happen, uh, we have to learn how what why did I have to course correct? What did I have to do different? Um, maybe if you go into the refrigerator, you wait till nobody's home. Um, the dog and cats are outside, nobody's home to holler, hey mom, while you're there at the fridge, can you bring me this? Can you bring me that? Um, so you wait till everybody's gone. Um, so you have to move forward. Um, you know, we might say, Man, if I get rid of all those clothes, um, I'm gonna regret that because I might need them later. But is what you learn sometimes is you got rid of them and you go, Wow, that's not an option anymore. Um, so now, you know, instead of letting it get instead of two pounds and moving up uh one little size uh or or waiting until five pounds, I'm just gonna, it's two pounds, I'm dropping it back, or I'm gonna hit a little more cardio, or I'm gonna watch what I eat a little bit more. I don't have that option anymore because I don't want to go buy clothes and I don't want to go buy my get my stretchy pants out or my Thanksgiving shirt, and that's two sizes too big, so I got plenty of grown room on Thanksgiving. Um, I'm not gonna do any of that. Um, so we learn. We we still move, um, but we overcome that fear of regret of what if this happens? Um, and then the last one is um to overcome our fear, is we shift from that I'm not good enough, uh, I'm not trained, I don't have a mentor, I don't have the education, uh, I don't have the money, etc. etc. etc., to um understand we don't have to have it all figured out. We just have to move. Again, because we everything is is learnable. Um, as we've talked about before, learn a little do-a-leo, learn a little do-a-leo. So many times the fear of I need to know every single stop along my destination. I need to know every bathroom stop, I need to know every stop we're gonna eat at every gas station. I need to know everything has to be planned out, and if I don't know that one stop, then that's gonna that's gonna halt everything. Um but we have to overcome that. That we don't have to know the whole plan. Um, do you know the whole plan for your life? Does anybody? If you are, you're amazing. But yet, do you still get up every day and and give the day hell? Every day. You don't you you don't know what the next 10 years are gonna be, you don't know what the next 20 years is gonna be. And that's the same thing. We have to live that day and do that as today's. I mean, I don't know what the next step is. I don't know what the next thing is. Um, maybe I don't know enough, but I can learn it. Maybe I'm not educated enough. Uh, maybe I don't have enough money, but I can earn get more money. Maybe I'm not trained, but I can find somebody to teach me those things. We don't have to have it all planned out. We just have to say, I'm gonna move in this direction. I'm gonna move towards what I want. So I'm gonna move towards the relationships I want. I'm gonna stop making excuses because I want to move towards my goals, whether it's physical, financial, relationship, the employment, whatever it is, I'm gonna move towards those goals so I can start. Maybe it's it maybe we don't have the confidence. Maybe that's a boat we have to burn. So I'm gonna start moving towards, you know, getting done something, go, man, I did that really good. Even if it's peeling an apple, man, I feel that apple like a champ. Even it's a it's as simple as things, it's moving us forward to those. So to overcome our fears and burn the boats, we have to use our personal power. That the only way it gets stronger, just like in the gym, is using it, using it every day. Every day you use it, it'll get stronger and stronger and stronger. Stop looking for that approval from the outside. You know, not everybody's gonna support you, not everybody's gonna like you, and that is okay. We have to choose what is best for us because nobody walks in your shoes. We have to, you know, we have to move, we have to make those decisions because we can always course correct. Whatever that is, uh we can course correct. They they got off the boats on the you keep you keep you can the peninsula, and they thank you. They went forward. I remember uh anagram, I remember that. And we have to shift from I don't have it all figured out, we just have to start moving. So we have to, if if they stayed on those ships, they would have never overtook the army. They had to move, and when they move, they can course correct, they don't need approval, and they use that personal power to say we're not trying. We decided that is strong personal power. When you decide something, um, that means no matter what, it will happen. Any thoughts, comments, or questions about burn your boats? The challenge is this, real quick. Sorry, the challenge is this is is what in your life needs to be burned? What boat needs to be burned? What neat boat needs to be maybe gotten rid of or made less? And I'm not talking about the whole fleet. Maybe it's one small little dinghy of a boat that you need to burn up and get rid of and sink. And the challenge is what is that in your life that you can can work on? It can be from a dinghy to a big old yacht. Just know that you'll have to start at a dinghy to get enough personal power to get up to that yacht. Um, any final thoughts, comments, or questions about um burning the boat or burning your dinghy? And thank you to each of you for joining me on Sit and Talk. And I'm looking forward to seeing you next time right here on Sit and Talk.