WHAT WE CAN LEARN FROM BUTTERFLIES

Have you ever had those days where you wish for a life of ease, free from failure or disappointment? Haven’t we all? But what would we sacrifice in the process?

Here’s a simple story I found online that illustrates the importance of adversity in our lives.

There was once a little boy who was playing outside and found a fascinating caterpillar. He carefully picked it up and took it home to show his mother. He asked his mother if he could keep it, and she said that he could if he promised to take good care of it.

The little boy got a large jar from his mother and put in plants to eat, and a stick on which to climb. Every day he watched the caterpillar and brought it new plants to eat.

One day the caterpillar climbed up the stick and started acting strangely. The boy worriedly called his mother, who immediately understood that the caterpillar was creating a cocoon. The mother explained to the boy how the caterpillar was going to go through a metamorphosis and become a butterfly.

The little boy was thrilled to hear about the changes his caterpillar would go through. He watched every day, waiting for the butterfly to emerge. One day, a small hole appeared in the cocoon and the butterfly started to struggle to come out.

At first, the boy was excited, but soon he became concerned. The butterfly was struggling so hard to get out! It looked like it couldn’t break free…It looked like it was making no progress…it looked desperate!

The boy was so concerned that he decided to help it out. He ran to get scissors and snipped the cocoon to make the hole bigger so that the butterfly could emerge more easily.

And the butterfly came out! But the butterfly didn’t look like the boy expected it to- it had a swollen body and small, shriveled wings. The boy continued to watch the butterfly, expecting that, at any moment, the wings would dry out, enlarge and expand to support the swollen body. He knew that in time the body would shrink, and the butterfly’s wings would grow to full size.

But neither happened.

The butterfly spent the rest of its short life crawling around with a swollen body and shriveled wings. It would never fly. And it didn’t survive.

As the boy tried to figure out what had gone wrong, his mother took him to talk to a scientist at a local college. The scientist explained to the little boy that the butterfly was SUPPOSED to struggle. In fact, the butterfly’s struggle to push its way through the tiny opening of the cocoon pushes the fluid out of its body and into its wings. Without the struggle, the butterfly would never, ever fly. The boy’s good intentions had inevitably hurt the butterfly.

This story is powerful because it’s so applicable to our everyday lives- both at work and at home. We have good intentions about wanting to help save someone else from struggling. I see this all the time in my role as a Leader and a Coach. A manager will want to take on extra work or do the job for someone on their team- not only because they believe they can execute better and faster, but also because they don’t want to see someone on their team fail or struggle. A parent will understandably want to shelter a child from some of the realities of the world at large. A Client will want me to give them the answer to the difficult questions because thinking is hard work, or they’re afraid they’ll give a ‘wrong’ answer or be embarrassed. But often when people want to save others from their struggle, they’re depriving them of the opportunity to learn to survive- and then thrive- on their own. And another layer of observation is that often we don’t WANT to witness the struggle, because it makes US uncomfortable. Somewhere along the way, however, someone allowed us that invaluable and life-changing opportunity, and we learned from it.

As a Coach, I am comfortable with Clients being in a place of struggle, of facing difficult truths, of figuring out the solutions that will enable them to shake off the confines of the cocoon that has held them back for so long, because this transformation allows them to fly on their own and to sustain that flight.

SO, THE STRUGGLE IS REAL! AND REALLY IMPORTANT. EMBRACE THE STRUGGLE. LEARN FROM IT. SOAR.

May these next few months be ones of significant transformation in your life! If you are ready to embark on your journey of personal and sustainable transformation, I’d love to partner with you. Please contact me at Deb’s Calendar to book a Strategy Consultation.