From A CAtErpIllAr to tHE ButtErfly; A JournEy oF LEARNING
Mayur Kalbag mayurkalbag@hotmail.com
Have you ever seen a butterfly run? Or for that matter we would never be able to see it crawl. But if we think more deeply it has crawled and walked too before it turned into a butterfly from what it earlier was, a caterpillar!!!
Sometimes when we see a butterfly flying around happily from one flower to the other we must try and also remind ourselves about the journey and that too a difficult one that it has undertaken towards finally evolving into the butterfly. While today it may have the wings to fly there was a time when it did not have proper legs to even walk through the plants and upon the trees.
If we can look at the butterfly through the attitude of change we can surely learn amazing things that could help us deal with our own challenges that we sometimes face while trying to achieve our own peaks of professional success!
What the butterfly goes through is the process of a difficult transformation. It lives the life of a caterpillar and goes through times where it is vulnerable to even being eaten by birds, lizards and other predators and yet it fearlessly keeps living its life with the determined vision and hope towards developing itself as a beautiful and a colorful butterfly. It is aware of the fact that as a butterfly it will be also getting its wings with which it will be able to fly wherever it wishes to!
For the caterpillar the change that it has to go through is extremely painful and could take a lot of time too. But what we see is its attitude of mental toughness to endure that pain and the difficult times.
The time when it creates a cocoon is also a point to be addressed. While in the cocoon the caterpillar reflects another aspect of its attitude and that is its patience! It knows that staying inside will also mean that it will be unable to move at all and this also means that it will be completely deprived of eating its food.
Inside that cocoon it seems almost imprisoned and tied up. But it still endures all this only because of its belief and conviction that it will eventually become the ‘flying butterfly’
Is there something to learn from this caterpillar? I believe not only can we learn but also implement the learning into our professional as well as our personal life!
As we keep working in organizations there are going to be many situations which will make us feel like a caterpillar. We may find the going tough. We may even find ourselves achieving things at a very slow place or rather better term would be at a ‘Crawling Pace’.
There will be times when we will be going through feelings of frustration and stress just like that caterpillar goes through while it remains imprisoned inside the cocoon. Having said this just like the caterpillar survives through its own difficult ordeal we too must learn to do the same. But this is only possible when we too are clear about our eventual goal of what we want to achieve finally in our professional life.
The caterpillar is not only aware but also inspires itself with the belief that it will eventually become the butterfly. It never lets that belief die down or fade away!
I believe that this supreme attitude of the caterpillar is a great learning for us. The question we must ask ourselves is’ What is our eventual and final GOAL?’
There must be tremendous CLARITY and along with it a strong CONVICTION regarding where we want to go in our life.
When this clarity and conviction is strong we will be able to go through any processes of change. There will come times when we may have to stay late at office and work double shifts or there will be situations when your profile may be changed or your boss may chamge too but these are the transformational challenges we must endure with the attitude of a caterpillar.
Change management is the true need of the hour especially in the present times of continuous competition and changing expectations from the internal as well as external customers.
As we begin to see opportunities for us to grow we must also at the same time be open to the new changes and transformations that we would have to undergo. Just as a ship sails through the oceans and deals successfully with the changes in weather such a storms, winds and fluctuating waves towards reaching the shore we too must keep our attitude positive and strong through the ups and downs that we may face towards accomplishing our goals and objectives.
The caterpillar never gave up till it finally came out of the cocoon as a butterfly. Sometimes what we can learn from such creatures of nature can be more fruitful and productive for our own growth than just the stuff that we may learn from management books only.