In 1519, Hernan Cortes landed on the coast of Mexico with 600 men.
They were outmanned, and completely unfamiliar with the terrain. Facing an empire with resources that dwarfed anything they had brought across the Atlantic with them. Every rational military calculation said this was not winnable. A lost cause.
Cortes looked at his men. He looked at the ships behind them.
And then he did something no one ever expected. Cortes set fire to the ships.
All of them.
No vote. No discussion. No debate. No "let's keep one just in case." He burned their only way home and gave his men the only two options that remained: win here, or die here. History's most brutal motivational speech was a burning ship.
When retreat is impossible, advance becomes inevitable.
The Back Door You're Keeping Open
Here's what I want you to think about.
Not Cortes. Not 1519. You.
What ship are you keeping in the harbor just in case the new version of you doesn't work out?
Most people have one. The old version of themselves they keep alive somewhere in the background. The retreat they tell themselves they'll never take while quietly keeping the exit unlocked.
That back door is not a safety net.
It is a leak in your commitment.
Jim Rohn said it straight: you cannot make progress without making decisions. Real decisions. Not "I'll try this and see." Not "I'm mostly done with that." Not "I could go back if I needed to." Those are not decisions. Those are half-assed attempts with a predetermined off-ramp.
Keeping options open is keeping commitment closed.
And as long as the ship is in the harbor, part of you is still watching it.
The Three Ships Most People Never Burn
01 The Drink You Tell Yourself You Can Still Moderate
You've cut back. You've set rules. One glass. Only on weekends. Only at social events where it would be weird not to. You've negotiated the terms, revised the terms, then you renegotiated the terms.
Here's the truth: if you have to negotiate with it, you're not in control.
The people who have a healthy relationship with alcohol do not have to spend time or energy managing their relationship with alcohol. And as long as you're managing it, the ship is still in the harbor. You haven't quit. You've put the obvious and inevitable results on a layaway plan.
02 The Relationship You Kept Half-Open
You know the one. The person you text when it's late and you're lonely and the new life feels harder than you expected. The one who knew the version of you you're supposed to be leaving behind. The one where the conversation always circles back to who you used to be.
That relationship is not a connection. It is an anchor to a harbor you say you've left.
You cannot fully commit to who you're becoming while keeping a thread tied to who you were. The thread doesn't feel like much. Until you try to move forward and it pulls you back.
03 The Side Door at the Job You Say You've Quit
The LinkedIn profile still optimized for the old career. The resume kept warm, just in case. The salary calculator you keep pulling up on rough Fridays when the new thing is hard and the old thing seems... not so bad after all.
Side doors and safety nets are rarely smart planning.
They are votes of no confidence in your own decision and abilities. Your subconscious mind knows this.
Every time you check that tab, you are telling yourself the new thing probably won't work. And your brain, which is listening to everything you tell it, files that away and acts accordingly.
The Last Drink
For seven years, I tried to quit drinking.
I use the word "tried" on purpose, because trying was exactly the problem. I set rules and broke them. I quit on Monday and negotiated my way back by Friday. I lied to myself about how much and how often, and then I lied to everyone around me to cover the first lie.
I hid bottles in the kitchen. I hid bottles in the garage. A grown man, a decorated deputy, hiding liquor in his own house like a teenager sneaking it past his parents.
Seven years of trying. Seven years of failing.
Because trying was never going to work.
There's a reason a little green puppet from a swamp has outlasted every motivational speaker of my lifetime. He said it in nine words:
Do. Or do not. There is no try.
Yoda
Trying keeps the ship in the harbor. I did not need to try harder. I needed to burn the boat.
So I stopped negotiating. I did not moderate my way out. I did not taper. I did not have a plan to "cut back significantly" and hope for the best. I had watched too many people try to negotiate with the thing that had beaten them, and I had run enough of my own negotiations to know exactly how they ended.
And when the time came to walk away from the stimulants and the prescriptions I had traded the alcohol for, I already knew the terms. All or nothing. No moderation. No back door.
August 25, 2022. The last day. It has stayed the last day ever since.
I burned the ship.
Not because I was strong enough to resist temptation. But because I wasn't. I had to make a decision that did not come with a back door. And then I built a morning and daily routine around that decision so that reversing it required more work and effort than moving forward.
That's the whole thing. The system, the commitment, the identity shift, all of it, wrapped in one moment of burning something I knew I could not afford to keep.
You cannot moderate your way out of the thing that is keeping you stuck. You can only burn it.
Ships and Bridges Are Not the Same Thing
One distinction that has to be made before we go further.
Burning ships and burning bridges are not the same thing, and confusing them will cost you.
Burning ships means committing fully to the new direction. Removing the option of retreat. Closing the back door. It is a decision about your own future.
Burning bridges means destroying relationships out of bitterness. Scorching the earth behind you so no one can follow, and so you can never return even if returning would be right. It is a decision made in anger that you pay for long after the anger is gone.
One frees you.
The other imprisons you.
Burn the ships. Don't burn the soldiers.
Commit to the direction without torching the relationships that will help you along the way.
What ship has been sitting in the harbor of your life, waiting for you to fail?
You've been keeping it there a long time.
Today is the day you burn it.
Your Turn
Name the ship you need to burn.
Reply with one word.
That's all I need to know.
