I Butterfly
There is more to you than meets the eye.
Butterflies, I’ve always thought, are great metaphors for success. Many people will tell you "don’t show people that you care." They tell you to separate what you do for a living from your emotions, and you know what, I think that’s wrong. I think you need to get in line with your emotions. Your emotions are part of what makes you special. That’s what makes humans special, our ability to care about something.
Getting in line with things that you are passionate about aligns you with the things that are going to give you power, the things that are going to give you a glimpse at the truly great person that you can be. Many people out there tell us, "Separate your emotions, hide them, never cry, don’t show any kind of emotions; have a poker face." We say this on the one hand, but on the other hand, when we look at the lives of many of the people we idolize: the sports stars, the entertainers, the athletes, we look at these people and they’re completely connected to the things they care about most. They’re completely driven by their passion.
In fact, look at football. In football you can see a 300 pound monster of a man, a rock solid muscle, fall on his knees in front of 60,000 people and shed a tear because a ball didn’t go through the uprights. Think about that. That’s somebody that’s truly connected to their passion. Maybe it’s no wonder they’re compensated so greatly for what they do. I find it just a little odd that it’s all right to be completely passionate, almost fanatical, about sports, yet you’re supposed to be completely non-emotional about your career, your job. Those are things that are actually providing for you and your family and your future. It doesn’t make any sense. So, maybe it makes sense for you to not only pursue those butterflies, but also to try to find other people that are brave enough to pursue those butterflies as well.
Maybe if you pursue those butterflies long enough, you might actually become one. Think about it, the life of a butterfly starts off as a caterpillar. It’s really a worm, crawling around on the ground. There’s nothing around to tell him that he will be anything other than that; nothing around him that tells him he will be anything greater than that. When he looks out, whether or not he’s got dreams of flying above the trees and the clouds, nothing in current life, nothing in the couple of inches before his face tells him that he will ever be anything greater than what he currently is. The only thing that does is the voice inside of his head that tells him to drive forward, to keep doing, to follow his instincts.
One day, he’s going to be so driven, and one day, he’s going to be so surrounded by his beliefs, that he’s going to wrap himself up to isolate himself from a non-believing world. He’s going to wrap himself up to isolate himself from the naysayers, from the dream stealers, from all the people that don’t believe. He’s going to find himself completely separated from that world in his little cocoon. And then one day, one day, he’s going to step out, out of that cocoon, and transformed he will be, completely transformed. He will fly away from that moment forth. He will fly out into the world, and no, he’s not going to look out into the world and say, "I told you so." He’s going to look into himself and say, "I knew I could. I knew I was more than the world was telling me I could be. I knew I was more than everybody surrounding me was telling me I could be. I knew I was more than even the mirror was telling me I could be. I knew that I could fly! I butterfly!"
Earlmann, earl mann, motivation, inspiration, what the bleep, anothony robbins, les brown
Comments