The Triangle of Fire 🔥

Can you recall the three elements needed to build a fire?

Aug 04, 2021

Can you recall the three ingredients needed to build a fire?

When I was in third grade, I remember being split into groups by the teacher and told to draw “the triangle of fire.” We sat there in those tiny chairs with our pencil boxes and rulers, tapping our tiny sneakers anxiously on the smelly carpet.

I bring up this elementary school example because I’ve been doing a lot of (overly existential) thinking lately. It’s made me realize that living the Good Life is not so different from maintaining a flame.

It’s because: life is fire.

Do you remember them? If you do, it sounds simple, but think for a second how you might do it. How do you draw what’s invisible to the eye?

And if you don’t recall, this piece will explain a smidgen of physics, plus a three-step checklist for when our own flames begin to dwindle.

🌬Oxygen

I spent most of July in Rhode Island at the house I grew up in. It’s one of the most beautiful places to be in the summer, yet this year I struggled to enjoy it. Sometimes when I’m at home I become rigid. And, for me, rigidity is mental lockup.

I try to take a normal Monday in Austin and (stubbornly) force it into Monday in Rhode Island. The work felt less efficient, as did the workouts, and the learning, and the growth.

By the end of Monday I’m feeling squeezed, like I’ve tried to fit through a crawl space I used as a ten-year-old.

A candle falls on the table and ignites a newspaper. What do you do? You smother it. You take away it’s space. You cut off its access to oxygen.

That’s how I was feeling—smothered, rigid, tight.

I had cut off point one in the triangle of fire. Oxygen.

The way I see it, a life that lacks oxygen is:

Rigid
Redundant
Unspacious
Trapped

For me, it wasn’t just being in Rhode Island, but being at home without a car. My big-dumper-of-a-chevy lives in Austin now. So, when there, I’m basically reverted to a nine-year-old who’s been grounded. I love the place to death, but it’s still suffocating.

People feel this way all the time without even knowing it. It’s that subtle, silent, pressure, that feeling of lostness and insignificance. Usually it’s unfounded, but we still feel it.

Someone/something, has thrown a wet towel over you.

What is it? What’s smothering you? Are you feeling cabin fever? A need to travel? Stuck at work? Bored of the same routines? Does a relationship have you trapped?Have you relapsed to old habits?

All of the above fill your head with troubled thoughts, with negativity, and when that happens it’s too crowded for whatever your flavor of oxygen is.

Life is fire. Give it space to breathe.

⛽️Fuel

Every fire uses different fuel. Some fires burn on wood, others on oil, gas, fabric. In a firepit, a person must add fuel to keep it burning. Wildfires, on the other hand, spread and find their own.

For people, what is fuel? What drives us? What keeps us working, striving, growing?One answer might be money, but there’s another answer too, a broader one: Motivation.

For people, Motivation is fuel. I’m not talking about motivational YouTube videos. I’m talking about real, visceral, bottom-up Motivation. Motivation is what gets you out of bed, into work, to the gym, off the couch, cooking for loved ones. Motivation is the opposite of depression and regression. Motivation is force of will.

For me, people are fuel. Just being around others makes me work harder, create better, strive more. People give me Motivation. It doesn’t matter how introverted (me) you are, every human is social by nature. In our relationships, we want to be esteemed by others, and impressing someone takes effort. A depressed person has no stamina for effort. A motivated person, however, does. Motivation begets effort.

Work, creativity, exercise, healthy eating, optimism, caring for others—Motivation begets them all. And motivation comes from people and places.

Recall: Fire can burn on all sorts of fuel—some are better than others.

Likewise, you are surrounded by all sorts of people—some are better than others.

People and places, that’s the fuel. The Motivation. Who you are with, and where you are.

Be choosy who, what, and where your fuel comes from.

❤️‍🔥Heat

Element number three is Heat. Heat is the energy we feel from particles bouncing around at high speeds. When its cold, particles contract and slow down. When it’s hot, they speed up, the fire crackles more loudly.

People need heat too, but not just the kind that changes the temperature.

Heat, for a person is challenge, tension, effort.

Like a fire requires a high temperature to stay burning, people require enough challenge and stimulation to stay thriving.

If I told you that a man named Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi—a plump 86 year old Croatian with a bushy white beard, round face, and toothless smile—was one of the most important scientists of our time, would you believe me? (Yes, real name.)

Mihaly’s life’s work was studying “peak performance” and “flow” in athletes, artists, knowledge workers and beyond.

As it turns out, fire and peak experiences have an element in common:

Challenge, effort, heat.