Book Review: Find the Fire

Estimated reading time: 2 minutes

Find the Fire: Ignite Your Inspiration—and Make Work Exciting Again
Author: Scott Mautz
2017, Amacom
Price $24.95

This is a fabulous book for whenever you get the blahs! You know what I’m talking about. There are times when you just cannot get out of your own way, and everything you try to do gets stuck in park and you just can’t understand how you ever got anything done in the first place. This is one of those books you should keep in a glass case with a sign that says, “When stuck in a rut, break glass and read book.”

Scott Mautz has filled each chapter with tips and tools on how to handle the “anti-muses” that show up and put out your spark of initiative. You know the ones: fear, boredom, inundation, loss of control, dwindling self-belief, disconnectedness, dearth of creativity, insignificance and lack of evocation. I can feel the spark of my initiative to even finish this book recommendation while just listing them here!

But have no fear. Mautz deftly handles each one of these spirit suckers, demonstrating techniques to chase them away and move on to more inspiring venues. For handling fear he gives real-life examples of great men like Michael Jordan and Walt Disney, who failed miserably, only to use that failure as a true inspiration to become stronger and get back on the road to success.

For inundation, which is really another form of procrastination, he shows the reader how to break away from all the causes of putting things off, with particular attention to the ever-dangerous tendency towards counterproductive perfectionism. And when we are overwhelmed by loss of control, he demonstrates how to regain that control with a few simple tactics for facing your challenges, such as thriving on feedback good or bad and that all-important one we all should master, embracing change.

The one thing we all should remember is that inspiration is not automatic. None of us has the time or the luxury to sit around waiting for our muse to show up and inspiration to strike. Instead, we have to turn to techniques like the ones outlined in this important book to get our juices flowing again.

The next time you find yourself needing a good swift kick of inspiration, this is the book to break into. The next time someone starts taking control of your life, run, don’t walk to the shelf where you keep this book and crack it open. Whatever you do make sure you do it with Find the Fire.

Find it on Amazon.