What ignites your imagination?  What fire burns deep within your heart?  What is your passion, your mission, or your vision?  Whatever the answers are, do not let them wane.  Do not douse them with complacency.  Find a way to take hold of them, control them, and keep them burning.  These are good flames.  They are the heated truths and sparks of dreams that make you strive for more.

There are good fires and bad fires.  The fires that race through your heart and give your dreams a place to burn are  good.  Other fires, the kind that break down, tear away, melt and disintegrate that which is necessary and useful, are the ones you need to find a way to extinguish.

Surprisingly though,  both kinds of fires can bring out the best in you by forcing you to make decisions and take action.

FIRE!

On my son’s 16th birthday in June, we spent part of the morning fighting a real fire, the scary kind of fire that burns uncontrollably and picks up pace and consumes in a matter of seconds.  It was a warm morning, as always, here in Florida. We had trash burning in a fire ring in the back yard.  It is a circle of cement blocks that keeps the small tight fires contained and burning quickly and efficiently. An unlikely wind must have picked up because the fire jumped, and the next thing I knew we were fighting a fire.

That morning was no different from any other except that it was my son’s 16th birthday!  Do you remember your 16th birthday?  Next to turning turning twenty-one, turning sixteen is like a door opening into your life. You know what you like, you have a unique personality, you think about your future, your schooling, and maybe even your career.  You feel ready to conquer the world and hopefully you’ve mastered a little confidence.  You have friends and interests and life seems good.

How ironic, I guess, to be experiencing a milestone birthday, when a fire sets ablaze in your backyard threatening to steal everything that you have. On one of the biggest days of my son’s life, he was running around frantically with a water hose in hand. The fire was blazing, but what happened next was completely unexpected.

It all started when I was upstairs working on some martial art writing and I heard commotion.  I looked out and could see flames moving at a rapid pace outside the cement ring. I ran down the sixteen stairs inside my house and headed toward the backyard screaming, “Should I call 911?”  Truly, there was no time to make a call.  My son grabbed a hose on one side of the yard and my husband grabbed on the other.  I was amazed at how the flames were panning out, still in a circular formation and  edging up to the side of the house.  My son’s hose would not work.  I cried out “What do I do, what do I do?” but everyone was too busy fighting a fire to hear me.

I started filling buckets of water from the utility sink in the laundry room right inside the back door of the house and tossed them forward into the fire.  My son got his hose to work just in time. He didn’t panic, didn’t give up, and kept trying until it got the water to finally rush through.  With my husband on one side and my son and I on the other, we worked the edges until we pulled the fire slowly back in to where it began.  We were covered in wet ash and I realized I had never put on shoes and walked through the heated ground without ever feeling a thing.  “So, that’s how they walk on hot coals,” I realized. “They concentrate of something else.”

CONTROLLING FIRES

If martial arts have taught me anything, it is how to persevere and contain my personal fires.  You can control your fires, too- fear fires, anxiety fires, health fires, denial fires, addiction fires – and all the fires that burn so frequently in your life that you almost do not acknowledge them anymore. What you often do not realize about your own fires is that others see them ebb, flow, and burn.  When your ego is too big, people notice.  When you shy away from confidence, others know.  When you struggle with health or weight issues, it is no secret. When you rely on addictive behaviors to help you get through the day, others eventually find out.  You may try to suppress these fires, but you never completely put them out.

One of my responsibilities is to teach students how to contain the bad fires of their lives, and help the good fires increase. In one way, martial arts are like the fireman’s hose of gushing water, but instead of water, a steady flow of confidence building, focus, and self-discipline erupts. An especially shy child will receive a little more one on one instruction from me than the one who already believes he is a Ninja Turtle.  The child who cries at his first class for fear of not knowing what to expect, will receive some hand-holding.  The new adult student who has some health issues will hear me provide modifications to the exercise.  I must help them do more than temporarily suppress their fires.  My job is to let them know that together we can put those nuisance fires out, and transfer the flames to their passions.

Would I have been able to stop that fire working side by side with my family if I had not really put my mind to it?  If not for the fact that my black belt taught me so many life lessons, I may have given up before I tried. My  black belt voice called out:

Yes, you absolutely can do this.  The day you got your black belt and your second degree proves that you are willing to go above and beyond to take control of your life. You must act like a black belt here and now.

There was no way I was going to watch some crazy little fire burn it all away.

BRAVE YOUR FIRES

I’m not suggesting anyone ever fight a real fire.  In fact, it’s an awful idea.  Being in a rural area is different though.  Fire trucks don’t just pull up in a matter of seconds.  Some containment is necessary in the interim.  There comes a moment when you know, one way or the other, what you need to do. I saw my heroic self emerge as I helped put out the fire.  Fear exposed itself just long enough for me to make a decision about what to do.  Before I knew it, I was embraced in a dark smoky shadow that wanted to devour all that I love and treasure.

Pick one of your bad fires and start sprinkling some water on it.  What happens to it?  Dilute it with whatever you have in your arsenal of defense, things like positive thinking, bravery, belief, trust, and devotion.  I don’t ever want you to face a fire burning out of control and not know what to do.

I’ve battled real fires in my lifetime. I could have lost everything, but I did not.  I learned how easily my material world could come crashing down, but how my family would always stick together.  It all reminded me of the day I faced that personal fire of testing for a black belt, and also  reminded me of the special spark I have for living my life, every day, like a dedicated black belt.

Truthfully, I don’t recall anything special about my 16th birthday. There is no photo or memory or reminder of how I celebrated that day.  Maybe running around with a fire hose putting out a fire is not such a bad way to experience a milestone like a 16th birthday.  I doubt any of us will ever forget that day.

Fight your bad fires with all the determination of a firefighter.  As for the good flames, let them ignite your passion and help you discover your true inner hero.

xoxo

Andrea

 

My book, The Martial Arts Woman, is now available! Purchase yours at themartialartswoman.storenvy.com or on Amazon