Put 20 flies in a jar, slap on a lid with air holes and watch what happens. If the flies are like most, they’ll try to jump out of the jar for a few hours before giving up. When you take the cover off in a day or so, only a couple of the flies will find their way to freedom. The rest will just hang out in the jar until they die.
Peggy Dylan of Twain Harte, Calif. sees people dying in the jar all the time. They’ll operate on outdated assumptions, never thinking to look around them to see what’s changed.
Dylan, an authority in the field of personal development, creates and presents seminars through her company, Sundoor. The company’s main focus is on firewalking – teaching people to overcome their fears by walking over hot coals. The practice of treading barefoot over smoldering embers has been around for thousands of years in cultures as diverse as the Hawaiian and Fijian islands to Tibet and India. Firewalking in other parts of the world is used as an initiation rite and a healing ritual. Dylan uses it as a metaphor to help people overcome fear and take action. Through Sundoor, she blends spiritual truths with a practical approach to applying this knowledge to life.
While her “product” may be unique, Dylan is a true entrepreneur. She knows that the difference between success and failure lies in how effectively she communicates the benefits of her seminars. Any small-business owner can relate to the story she tells of meeting a medicine man during her travels in Peru. He told her that there are times when life offers a square centimeter of chance. If you recognize it for the unexpected gift it is, and have the courage to grab it, then your life could be transformed. Most entrepreneurs can think back on their careers and recall such a moment.
Dylan was just 12 when she started on the road that led to Sundoor. Her sister died of leukemia, and Dylan, confused and in great pain, began a spiritual quest for happiness. In the 25 years since then, she has studied with spiritual masters in Peru and India. She brings her lessons to others with the experiential component that sets her business apart from others. She says her company has thrived because of a growing interest in human spirituality as well as eagerness among people to test their limits in order to grow. Entrepreneurs tend to deal with fear on a regular basis, from fear of failure to fear of success, How they react to these fears will either hold them back or bring their business to new heights.
Dylan explained that many entrepreneurs get caught up in their own model of reality. The firewalk forces people to break through their old way of thinking by forcing them to change their presuppositions about whom they are and what they’re capable of doing.
A common characteristic among successful entrepreneurs is a willingness to stretch their limits. This allows them to envision achievements and results that are impossible to arrive at without breaking old patterns of thinking. In other words, taking risks and checking old assumptions against new realities is the difference between being stuck in the jar of mediocrity or smashing the glass and flying toward great things.
