Believe it or not. I actually walked across 12 feet of red-hot coals, along with at least 75% of 3,800 other people in attendance at a four-day, 50-hour conference. There were 25 different fires, and an entire crew of firewalker handlers. Turns out the greatest danger to this writer was the possibility of tripping over all the garden hoses lying on the the parking lot between the fires. In fact, I paid more than $1,000 for the privilege of risking sole burns…or face burns if I happened to trip and land in the blistering hot and very uneven surface. THAT, in fact, would be just my luck. But I didn’t trip. I took about six steps through the coals, and it only felt comfortably warm.
Don’t ask me how it works. Eager debunkers will be quick to pull up Google entries that prove it’s an illusion. All I have to say about that is, I’d like to see the biggest, bravest football player (who’s not drunk) take even one step into a red-hot campfire.
For me, the fact that I even had the courage to do it is enough to give me an entirely different view of the writing life every day when I wake up now. I’m not going to say I don’t still struggle with motivation. I have a hard time sitting in this dang chair for hours on end to write (as you know from a previous post).
I will say that the sheer gall of my doing the firewalk at Tony Robbins’ “Unleash the Power Within” conference changed something in me that makes it harder for me to think about sitting in my chair. I’m thinking, instead, of finding ways I can live the writing life without sitting in my chair all the time. Stay tuned. And in the meantime, if you’d like to challenge yourself to a little firewalk, I dare you: www.tonyrobbins.com. There’s another conference in November.
