Business Management – The Butterfly: Life’s Lessons for Realizing Your Potential

One day, a man found a butterfly cocoon. As he was watching the cocoon, a small opening appeared. He sat and watched the butterfly struggle unsuccessfully to force its body through the small opening.

After several hours with virtually no progress, the man decided to help the butterfly. He took a pair of scissors and made an incision, increasing the size of the opening so the butterfly could escape.  The butterfly easily emerged through the wider opening, but something was strange. The butterfly looked strange. Its body was swollen and its wings were shriveled.

The man watched intently, expecting the body to thin out and the wings to expand, but neither happened. The butterfly never reached its potential. It spent the rest of its life crawling around on the ground with a swollen body and deformed wings. It was never able to fly.

What the man in his haste to come to the butterfly’s aid never understood, was that his perceived act of kindness had actually doomed the butterfly to failure and ultimate death. You see, the struggle the butterfly would have endured to free itself from the cocoon was actually nature’s way of forcing the fluid from the body of the butterfly into its wings so the butterfly would be ready to fly once it was released from the cocoon.

The challenges agents face are much like the challenge above. We have three choices in life:

1. Wallow in Mediocrity – We can remain in the sheltered environment of the cocoon we have created for ourselves, never even realizing the true potential we have.

2. Delegate Our Potential – We can expect other’s to do things for us without realizing that by doing so, they are crippling our ability to grow and achieve true happiness and success.

3. Take the “Next Step” – We can endure life’s struggles and let them make us strong enough to reach our true potential.

“Leave the comfort of your cocoon,

Unfold your wings, step off the edge, and FLY!”