Thinking of Burning Your Ships? Here Are 5 Truths To Make For Smoother Sailing

Gary Schneeberger

March 29, 2023

We’ve just finished an entertaining and insightful series on our Beyond the Crucible podcast called BURN THE SHIPS. We interviewed seven guests from wildly diverse backgrounds who had one critical thing in common: They made bold, dramatic pivots in their lives, leaving one direction behind — even a lucrative or rewarding direction — to pursue something that to them is more fulfilling/daring.

From each one of those guests, we learned the very real stakes that accompany a “burn the ships” moment. Consider the meaning of the idiom, as defined in the Cambridge Dictionary: “If you are in a situation and you burn your boats/bridges, you destroy all possible ways of going back to that situation.”

That takes courage. Belief in your vision. Trust in your abilities. All three of those statements apply to the guests we interviewed.

From their journeys (and our own) we learned five crucial truths necessary to achieving a life of satisfaction and significance when determining to take a match to your ships:

1. Beware of “toxic persistence.”

That’s the counsel of Mike Beckham, who left behind a fulfilling executive career at a nonprofit ministry to apply his skills to the corporate world. He would go on to found the uber successful bottle, tumbler and accessories company Simple Modern – but not before an earlier effort fell short of gaining enough traction to generate a sustainable bottom line.

While the conventional wisdom in such a situation is to batten down the hatches and press on, he decided to burn another set of ships. That’s because, he told us, while mustering the pluck to stick to an idea through hard times is almost universally applauded, sometimes the wiser decision is accepting the reality that success is not in the cards.

“Persistence in the wrong context is more destructive than anything else,” he said. Having the moxie to live out that truth led directly to the multimillion-dollar success of Simple Modern.

2. Lean into your passion.

We heard this, saw evidence of it, from a few guests. One was Eryn Eddy, who was earning a nice living and building a nice career in the music industry, licensing her songs to popular TV shows, when something she did almost impulsively as a thank you to fans made clear she was even more dedicated encouraging others. After spray-painting the phrase “So Worth Loving” on TV shirts sent to her by her supporters, she saw the life-affirming hope those words gave to those who needed to embody the message. She burned her musical ships to devote herself to spreading that message more widely, establishing the apparel and accessories brand So Worth Loving.

Darwin Shaw had a similar experience when he walked away from a medical career in his native Britain. He became an E.R. doctor after years of education and training, but left it all behind for more creative pursuits like acting and filmmaking. He’s played the Apostle Peter in the record-breaking TV miniseries The Bible and been featured in two cinematic universes – James Bond and Marvel.  He offers this advice to others contemplating  similarly radical burning of their ships: “If you can hone in on what’s truthful for you and follow that, I don’t think you’re ever going to regret it.”

That’s the life our guest Joel Hungate is living today. A biomedical engineer by training, he’s been drawn to the adventure offered by the outdoors from an early age. After his mother died by suicide, he made some of her final words to him, “Just do it,” his life’s motto. That’s led to his appearance on Netflix’s survivalist reality series Outlast and prompted his pursuit of his life’s mission showing others how to live a life of “adventure readiness.” “It’s the next frontier in well-being; where health is a ‘means’ not an ‘end’ — where people are empowered with the inspiration and know-how to go places they never thought they would go, do things they never thought they could do, with a confidence and community they never imagined they would find, where adventure truly becomes a lifestyle.”

3. Do the inner work.

Finnian Kelly had accumulated his share of success – a prestigious military career, top-shelf entrepreneurship, star of a National Geographic channel documentary. But it all eventually failed him. Because he had never cared for the wounded soul he suffered as a boy, he told us, his world crashed around him in the wake of a difficult divorce. That’s when he finally did the inner work necessary to allow him to move on to a life of authentic purpose – to give him the courage to burn his ships. Today, he’s healed sufficiently to help others do the same as a speaker and coach who guides them into living with authentic intentionality.

Dan Wolgemuth also had inner work to do. For him, the shift from a corporate career that included a stint at General Electric during its heyday under the leadership of Jack Welch to leading the nonprofit ministry Youth for Christ only after he came to terms in his head and heart that he was not the author of his own life’s story. He had to hold his success with open palms to find true significance, he explained. “That burn the ship moment,” he told us, “had to happen first in my own soul.”

4. You don’t need all the details at the start if you have the direction.

The most dramatic story we heard from a guest was that of Donte Wilburn. He fell in with the wrong crowd in high school and started selling drugs, graduating to bigger deals as he worked to graduate from college. But then a sale went bad and he found himself with a gun barrel pressed against his forehead.

He survived that night, but still faced incarceration. Contemplating suicide as he awaited the outcome of his legal troubles, his mindset shifted when his mother told him repeatedly, “It’s going to be OK.” And it was. He was sentenced to work release and finished up his degree while working the only job he could find – washing cars at a detailing shop. He didn’t know where his life was going to end up after he burned the ships that got him on the wrong side of the law. But he kept sailing in the right direction.

It’s all become much clearer now. He graduated college and kept working his way up in the auto detailing business. He now owns it and mentors the teens and twentysomethings who work for him. “I know what change looks like because I had to do it myself,” he told us. “I found that my darkest time was the beginning of my best times.”

5. Little ships count, too.

It’s easy to think for a moment to qualify for burn-the-ships status, it needs to be an ocean liner you’re setting ablaze. That’s not true – at all. We learned that on our own journey, which we documented on the podcast series, when we changed our name from Crucible Leadership to Beyond the Crucible.

As we’ve explained, we realized that what we do day-in, day-out was less directed just at business leaders and less focused solely on Warwick’s personal story from setback to significance. We’ve become more about offering tools to help people turn their trials into triumphs.

That has been the inspiration for our free Life of Significance Assessment and our most ambitious undertaking to date, our Discover Your Second-Act Significance e-course. The shift in names is not a pivot from our mission and vision, but an adjustment. We sparked up some boats, but not our biggest vessels and not to sail to a completely different destination. It’s still igniting the ships, to be sure, but more of a controlled burn. And that takes its own kind of boldness.