BECOME THE FIRE

Transform Life’s Chaos Into Business and Personal Success

by Elisa A. Schmitz

Pub Date: Oct. 11th, 2022
ISBN: 9781608688104
Publisher: New World Library

An innovative new conception of successful motivation.

In her nonfiction debut, Schmitz encourages her readers to achieve their personal and entrepreneurial goals by fully embracing the risks and rewards of chasing their dreams, a process she refers to as “becoming the fire.” Central to her program is staying true to oneself while also exploring avenues for change and adaptation. “To become the fire, you need to be your authentic self,” she writes. “People who are their authentic selves are more likely to succeed because they are self-aware.” One’s genuine nature can be found by working through preferences and passions, testing alternate pathways and rejecting others, and eventually zeroing in on abiding desires. Drawing on her own experiences in the corporate world (with occasional digressions about her personal health problems) and the stories of other people, she furthers the discussion beyond the usual motivational talk about “fake it ’til you make it,” stressing that it ultimately isn’t sufficient. “You have to do the work of building confidence, accomplishment by accomplishment,” she writes, “to actually become self-confident.” Schmitz enhances her main points by peppering her text with inset sections called “Sparks” that consist of questions or challenges for her readers along the lines of her central concepts. “What motivates you?” goes a typical such section. “Think of two times your motivation led you to overcome your fear. How did that work out for you?” The end goal of all these segments is to help readers enter into “virtuous loops” of self-affirming habits and affirmations that will yield results in both business and personal worlds.

Schmitz writes with an infectiously upbeat tone, never elevating herself above her readers. She herself has made many of the personal and professional mistakes against which she’s cautioning her readers; her discussion of the ways she rose above those mistakes forms an integral part of the overall narrative. Her broad-scale observations about developing personal motivation are always refreshingly direct. “What gaps in your knowledge would hinder you along your desired career path or business launch?” goes one such question. “How can you fill in these gaps (either yourself or with help)?” Readers will find this directness a great help if they’re doubting themselves, but unfortunately, they have to wade through quite a bit of clichés to get to it: “Life can be scary, and life can be hard,” she informs her readers, for instance. And what does “becoming the fire” mean? It means more clichés: “It means not waiting for a lucky break, but instead making your own luck,” or “it means that your mindset matters; your choices matter; what you focus on matters; what you do with your time matters.” Since most know that their choices matter, it’s not likely that Schmitz’s readers will need to be told this. Fortunately, the author mostly compensates with frankness and helpful lessons drawn from hard experience.

A passionate if predictable look at how to find inner motivation.