The idea of One Burning Question has grown organically here on the blog. It started as a notion in the recent post, How to Stop Being Boring. I meant to open your eyes to power of your passion. I ended up opening my own.
How to Stop Being Boring was followed by the formal introduction of the increasingly important OBQ – Find Your One Burning Question.
Your One Burning Question is a guide post to your life purpose. Your OBQ has the potential to create passion, value, and relationships in your life. It can even change the world.
But asking your One Burning Question is just the first step, isn’t it? You must act. Taking action requires courage.
Only when you are strong enough to courageously stand alone in answering your One Burning Question, will people stand with you and help you find an answer.
Open Question, Open Journey
When you ask such an open question, there is no right path to arrive at the answer.
Even if two or more people ask the same question, every path will be a different journey. Every traveler is unique.
Every journey will have it’s own moments of celebration and of despair.
Your journey becomes your story.
Just like every satisfying story, every journey has an end.
How you travel the journey to answer your OBQ depends solely on you, but you will always need courage. Your strengths and weaknesses dictate how you will be challenged.
Your journey becomes your story.
Any journey to answer your One Burning Question will be intrinsically challenging. If it was not, it would not motivate you to answer.
The desire to answer your One Burning Question is the fuel that keeps you up late at night. It is the siren song that drives you forward as you are buffeted by towering waves.
Answering your OBQ is not a static process; it has the potential to be a cycle of death and rebirth. Your conceptions of yourself are reformed with each step you take to answer your OBQ.
The light that comes from your burning passion can illuminate areas of your life that have been bathed in darkness.
An Example of Courage
One of my mentors is Jayson Gaddis. I find Jayson and his pursuit of an answer to his Burning Question inspirational.
To paraphrase my experience of his OBQ: “How can we evolve the concept of manhood and heal the masculine in the world?”
While his OBQ is great, it is not what causes me to be inspired by him. I am inspired by the reality that he acts with the courage necessary to answer his One Burning Question.
Jayson was the founder of Revolutionary Man. He poured hours, weeks, and months mingled with sweat and tears into the brand, as he sought to answer his OBQ. And last week, Jayson announced that Revolutionary Man is dead.
Dead.
Done.
Finished.
Whether Jayson has distilled his OBQ into a more focused essence or if he is answering a new OBQ, is yet to be seen. What is obvious, is that Jayson is willing to courageously sacrifice and grow in order to answer his OBQ.
In the face of not knowing, Jayson has taken the step of finding the path he should be on.
There are many forms of adversity that must be conquered while answering your One Burning Question.
Not knowing if you are on the right path is a thought I can guarantee you will face. Being willing to completely alter your course to find that right path is something you might have to do to answer your OBQ.
There are many other obstacles. Facing any of them requires courage.
Paying the Price
Can you imagine giving up that which you’ve given so much of yourself to? After working so passionately, for so long, how much would you identify yourself with the work you had done?
Could you give yourself to the fire of your One Burning Question and let the flames give birth to any new incarnation that is needed?
To do so is to have courage.
To have courage is to face the fire of your One Burning Question, with the fear of not knowing where the future may lead, and choosing to walk through the fire anyway.
The world needs you to have courage when answering your One Burning Question. Without courage, you will not make it through the journey. You will leave the road untread, your question unanswered. What is the price of that?
One of the most inspirational quotes I’ve ever read was in The War of Art, by Steven Pressfield. He knows the price of not answering your One Burning Question.
…In the end, the question can only be answered by action.
Do it or don’t do it.
It may help to think of it this way. If you were meant to cure cancer or write a symphony or crack cold fusion and you don’t do it, you not only hurt yourself, even destroy yourself. You hurt your children. You hurt me. You hurt the planet.
You shame the angels who watch over you and you spite the Almighty, who created you and only you with your unique gifts, for the sole purpose of nudging the human race one millimeter farther along its path back to God.
… Don’t cheat us of your contribution. Give us what you’ve got.
- Steven Pressfield in The War of Art
Are you willing to pay such a price and not answer your OBQ?
Are you willing to “shame your angels”? To let the world continue down the path it is currently on?
I’m not. You can make a difference by answering your One Burning Question. Please do it.
Answering the Question
If you choose to answer your One Burning Question, you may be burned, consumed, dare I say changed irreversibly. You may lose every notion you thought was true, and I promise you will lose the safety of your cocoon.
But you may find the truth that burns inside you. You may actually live for once – courageously, in a way that is authentically you.
Fire is cleansing. Fire can burn away your doubts and your insecurities.
Just as ash renews the Earth, courageously answering your One Burning Question can create fertile ground for explosive growth.
If you believe in your One Burning Question, let it guide you. Give your OBQ the oxygen it needs. Let it blaze.
How will you summon the courage to answer your One Burning Question?
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{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
Action is the next step right after you’ve walked over fear. I think we all should start stepping into the light and away from the gloomy attitudes most of thee hold so enjoyably.
Action is the next step right after you've walked over fear. I think we all should start stepping into the light and away from the gloomy attitudes most of thee hold so enjoyably.
Walking over fear is critical, but so difficult at times. I don’t know that people ENJOY their gloomy attitudes, but they certainly can get comfortable in them. They know it, so it becomes their cocoon. Courage helps them break out of it.
I love the image of stepping into the light too. I think that the OBQ concept is a place for people to share their light
Nice blog! Are you on twitter anywhere?
Walking over fear is critical, but so difficult at times. I don't know that people ENJOY their gloomy attitudes, but they certainly can get comfortable in them. They know it, so it becomes their cocoon. Courage helps them break out of it.
I love the image of stepping into the light too. I think that the OBQ concept is a place for people to share their light
Nice blog! Are you on twitter anywhere?