"Doubt is the great
corrupter of callings. Doubt is legitimate when we are talking about a
job."
Fire in Your Belly: Calling vs. Job
by Gary North at Specific Answers
February 15, 2013
If you do not have fire in your belly, you should not expect to achieve anything significant.
I
know this sounds harsh, but I have found it to be true over half a
century. A person who does not have a blazing fire in his belly to
achieve something is not going to achieve very much.
If a project
is significant, most of the people that an innovator counsels with will
tell him that it cannot work. My favorite personal example of this is
from Otto Scott. Scott and a couple of other men came up with an idea
which has in fact revolutionized all retailing. They invented the idea
of the credit card. They went to a specialized expert in marketing, who
told them that it could not work. So, they dropped the idea. Diners Club
picked it up, and the rest is history.
Scott got an idea for a
series of books that was based on that experience. He wrote a
three-volume set which he called the Sacred Fools. They were biographies
of King James I, Robespierre, and John Brown. He never completed his
fourth volume, which was a study of Woodrow Wilson. All of these men
were in fact sacred fools. Scott was convinced that the experts really
are not that wise.
An expert can tell you why something did not
work in the past, but he is almost always incapable of telling you what
is going to work in the future. He is looking to the past. He has his
experiences from the past. He can tell you what he started in the past
that did not work. He can also tell you what worked, but that by now has
been imitated and absorbed in the general marketplace.
Here is
the basic rule. If an expert tells you that something can be done, it
probably can be. But if he tells you that something cannot be done, he
is almost certainly wrong. He will throw cold water on a project that
really should be attempted. It is a question of "not invented here." He
assumes that if he did not invent it, it cannot work.
Committees
are very good for warning you about pitfalls of specific plans. A
committee is a combination of people's experience. They can tell you
what to look out for. But they are almost always useless in telling you
what you ought to do. A committee is not going to come up with a
brilliant new idea that is going to change the world. In all likelihood,
the committee is going to tell you that the idea that you came up with,
which really might change the world, will not work.
If you have
an idea about what needs to be done, then you need to pursue it. You may
not want to pursue it, but you need to pursue it. If it is worth doing,
it is worth doing by you. If no one else is doing it, then either it
cannot be done or else no one else sees the opportunity. It does no good
to ask an expert, because he is going to be on the side of those who
tell you that it cannot be done. That is because he did not do it. He
did not think about doing it.
If something is your calling, you
must commit to it wholeheartedly. If something is the most important
thing that you can do in which you would be most difficult to replace,
you need to get busy, and you need to stick to your knitting. You need
to pursue it without stepping to the right or to the left.
If you
have fire in your belly, you can put it out in two ways. First, you can
pursue your vision, and the fire will finally go out. Your pursuit will
become routine. Second, you can forget about it, and the fire will go
out. But if you take a halfway position, never knowing whether you
should pursue it or not, or pursuing it halfheartedly, the fire is not
going to go out. You are not going to get the vision consummated. This
will nag at you for the rest your life.
My opinion is that you
must begin to estimate the costs of the project. When you count the
costs, either the fire goes out or does not. If it does not go out, then
it is your responsibility to pursue the matter. That is because nobody
else is likely to pursue it. If it is worth doing, it is likely that you
are the only one to do it. Anyway, you are the only one that you know
of who is likely to do it. You have to go by what is familiar in your
own experience. You cannot second-guess the whole world.
If you do
not think you can do it better than anybody else, do not do it. You can
do a job on this basis, but you should not pursue your calling on this
basis. If you are not the best person for the calling, then do not
commit to it. Commit to something else.
People come to me wanting
advice about whether they should do this or that. If it is a job, I am
happy to help. If it is a calling, I am not happy to offer advice.
Anyone who goes to another person to ask whether or not he should begin a
calling is making a terrible mistake. The other person is not equipped
to answer the question accurately. It is not a fire in his belly.
People who are insecure should not start major projects. People who have doubts should not start major projects.
Innovators
and entrepreneurs are people with fire in their bellies. They are
people who are convinced that a particular pathway is the best thing
that they can do. They are not filled with doubt. Doubt is the great
corrupter of callings. Doubt is legitimate when we are talking about a
job. There are alternatives to this job or that job. But when it comes
to a calling, an individual very rarely has alternatives. Maybe he does,
and maybe it is a question of whether he should pursue one rather than
another. He has fire in his belly for both of them. Then he probably
should consult with somebody, not telling them what he ought to do, but
telling him which fire he should pour water on.
There are not many
innovators. There are not many people who have fire in their bellies
regarding a particular calling. I wish this were not the case, but I
think it is the case. Not many people have the sense that something of
great importance hangs on their decision. They do not believe that
anything they do, or fail to do, will make much difference for the world
around them. So, they do not have fire in the belly.
I do not
know of any technique which can be used to light a fire in your belly. I
think those fires are self-generated by something outside: an unplanned
perception of what needs to be done. I do know this, however: if you
have a fire in your belly about something that you believe is crucial,
not just for yourself but for the world around you, you had better give
very careful attention to counting the cost of pursuing this calling.
You need to put out the fire. You either need to pursue the vision, or
you need to abandon entirely. Anything in between will not solve your
problem.
