Burning your bridges

Burning your Bridges

Everyone says that when you have a tough decision to make it’s vitally important that you don’t burn your bridges.

Leaving yourself a route back, just in case your decision turns out to be the wrong one, is just common sense.

Or is it? When Bob decided to leave his job and start a new business he worried, naturally, that his business might fail and he would need some income. So he arranged to work freelance for his old company while he got his new company started. Six months later his business had taken a back seat and he was working 5 days a week again for his old boss.

Keeping all your options open can mean avoiding making a decision at all. We are so worried about making a mistake that we don’t take even the smallest risks. And that can mean that nothing ever changes.

1. Make it hard to do the wrong thing
This story illustrates one way to use “Burning Your Bridges”. Jane is on a diet. She is not allowed to eat chocolate or biscuits. But until now she hasn’t been 100% committed to that decision. What if, in the middle of the night, she really wants a biscuit? She might not be able to sleep. Or what if friends come around and she doesn’t have anything to give them with their coffee?

If Jane is really going to commit she needs to ensure there are no biscuits and no chocolate in the house. She needs to tell her friends, if they are coming around, to bring their own biscuits and take them away at the end of the visit. In other words, she needs to make it easy to “do the right thing” and difficult to “do the wrong thing”.

Think about ways that you keep all your options open and thereby make it easy to do the wrong thing. What bridges would you need to burn to make it hard to do the wrong thing and easy to do the right thing?

2. Remove options
Burning bridges can also be used as a creative thinking tool. If your work involves thinking of ideas you can use “Burning Bridges” as a game to help you and your team think in new ways.

Let’s say you have to invent a new computer game. During the brain-storming session you could remove certain options e.g. Come up with at least 10 ideas for a computer game where people cannot use their hands. Or come up with at least 10 ideas for a computer game that costs less than £10.

When you put these kinds of restrictions on your thinking you are forced to think or act in new, original ways.

3. Actually burn something!
Sometimes, in order to move on emotionally from something that is holding you back, you need to say goodbye to old things. Keeping mementoes, letters or photographs can be wonderful. They can bring back pleasurable memories and feelings. But sometimes these things simply bring back pain or unhappiness. Sometimes their presence stops you from moving forward.

In one early episode of Friends the girls burned pictures of old boyfriends in a waste paper bin. The ritual backfired literally when the fire brigade had to be called!

However, as long as you take the right safety precautions, burning items that represent the old you or your old life can be hugely liberating. And making a ritual out of it can help you say goodbye to something old and hello to something new.

Cautious risk vs. irrational risk
Just a word of warning! Burning your bridges isn’t the same as having no escape route. It simple means removing the easiest route back to your old patterns, habits or ways of thinking. Sometimes you need to know you’ve got your worst-case scenario plan in place. But remember – that’s what it is. A plan to use in the worst-case scenario. After all, when you go on holiday you don’t put your life jacket on the moment you sit down on the plane. You only need it in case of emergency.

So this month, make some firm decisions and burn some bridges… just make sure you’ve got a fire extinguisher nearby!