Knowing When to Hold Your Fire
In a world obsessed with action and ambition, it takes a grounded leader to know when to hold fire
In today’s article, I will share the importance of knowing when to hold our fire and take no immediate action, when everyone around is glamorising going full steam ahead.
Ambition: An addiction hard to control
One of the hardest addictions to control is the addiction of ambition. Unlike other additions, we as a society look up to ambition. Yet, with many ambitious, people achieve a certain level of success and we don’t realise how miserable they are.
The question to ask is: Where is this ambition coming from? Our head or our hearts?
In todays ‘success’ culture we see “action, action, action” being preached all the time. There’s a place for action. There’s a better place for aligned action.
For instance, there have been many things I’ve acted on in certain projects going full steam ahead that I deeply knew wasn't the right time. Or when my intuition has said “not yet” but I ignored it succumbing to the noise of society because that didn’t feel like the heroic person I “should” be to achieve “success”.
Of course it didn’t work. I ended up tired and burnt out and having taken risks which sometimes put the people I lead in danger.
Bias towards action
We all have a bias toward action. “Our instinct is to charge ahead. There is a part of us that feels like it would rather die than admit defeat or worse, run away. In the storybooks, in history books, retreat is the opposite of heroism, or courage, or discipline.” writes Ryan Holiday in Discipline is Destiny
It’s why you may have found yourself excited about a project or a new hobby or even a business venture, and started with great intensity. Yet, overtime, your consistency may have fell off. I’ve been there many times. Getting started is easy. Remaining consistent is where the game is won and where most fail.
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Discipline of a true leader
We haven’t seen many superheroes in movies retreat and say “no, this is not the right time” or say “no, this is not aligned with me right now”.
Taking the time to retreat and contemplate whether marching their team, family, community down a particular direction is not glamorised. The following questions have not been made heroic and sexy:
Is this in alignment with me?
Is it the right time?
Am I being pressured into this or is there a deep calling from within?
We may not have seen this in many movies, yet in real life, leaders such as Winston Churchill have demonstrated this virtue of “holding fire”.
Churchill was an ambitious leader and a doer, but one who mastered himself. In 1940, the French had asked Britain for support against the Germans. Churchill refused “this is not the decisive point”.
All the pressure was for him to do it. Millions of lives hung in balance. Yet he had the discipline to say no, not now. Again, in 1942, saying yes and agreeing would have been the easier thing to do, he again refused a landing in Europe.
Finally, on June 6th 1944, 60,000 British troops landed in Normandy. This was it. When time came, Churchill made the call. With great self-discipline, he held fire until the time was right.
Our ego doesn’t want to hold fire
Our ego will want to go for it. Our ego wants glory. Our ego wants to:
Say what’s really on our mind in a tense meeting
Start that project and show the world so we look
Make than investment so we don’t get FOMO
Have you mastered yourself enough to put your ego aside and walk away if it isn’t the right thing to do right now?
Are you willing to say no and accept that you may not be cheered on and even be called crazy?
Are you willing to walk away even once you’ve started because you’ve realised it’s not the right thing or will you succumb to sunk-cost bias?
It requires mastering yourself. It requires temperance. It requires mental discipline to hold your fire when the sexy thing to do is fire ahead.
Knowing when to retreat
In a world obsessed with acting now, quickly, eagerly. There’s something special in having the discipline to take a step back, be patient and hold your fire.
“Sometimes we need to disengage to re-engage, '' Rick Rubin writes in The Creative Act: A Way of Being.
“Retreats, we must remember, are only temporary. They are buying us time until we can take the offensive and courageously attack again in pursuit of our victory.” Ryan Holiday in Discipline is Destiny
We would could exponentially further when we, as at home and in business, are able to connect with a greater intelligence within us, take the time to align with it, and then act with the backing of an energy that runs the whole Universe.
It requires a leader with self awareness to know when to hold fire when everyone else around you seems to be following the hype and trend. It takes courage and discipline to go within and understand what is in alignment with you, what is best for the team, what’s best for your people and holding your fire when you need to.
Reflection question
Where am I being forced into action, when I deeply know I need to hold my fire, for now?
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