How to catch a Butterfly (159 days to go)
Part 1 (The Preamble):
There are so many things in my life that I am grateful for. One of these great things, is the ability to talk to all sorts of interesting people on a daily basis. I think this is one way you can definitely inspire yourself to take action everyday. There are some amazing people out there, and just talking to them gets me excited and motivated to achieve the things I want in life.
Over the past few weeks I have talked to some very interesting and successful people with regards to my fundraising efforts for Stop the Traffik to try and canvas more support. Some of the coolest people were listed below:
- Mike Pero from Mike Pero Mortgages
- Michael Mayell from CookieTime
- Scott Townsend from Just Tees
Without a doubt, Scott Townsend captured my attention the most. This 21 year old from Hamilton is doing some amazing things. He is the director of http://JustTees.co.nz and has come up with a crazy stunt, designed to get his business some more exposure. This is entrepreneurial thinking at it’s best!
While I can’t blab on about it too much on this post, I will talk about it at a later date. In the mean time, have a look for yourself - RIGHT HERE! While you’re there, you may as well vote and tell your friends to do the same. Crazy times call for crazy measures!!
So I was supposed to be talking about a butterfly right?….
Part 2 The Butterfly Story:
Someone else that I met yesterday, said something pretty profound. I thought it was an excellent analogy, so decided then and there to share it with you all:
We’re all looking for success in our lives, whether that comes in the form of money, love, being healthy or a combination of these things (plus other things I haven’t mentioned). Let’s say that whatever our goal is like a Butterfly in the wild. For this purpose, our goal can be “to earn a million dollars in one year” (don’t know where I got that idea from!).
So we set out to catch our butterfly. So perhaps we buy ourselves a net to catch this butterfly with. We then spend a considerable amount of time and energy trying to catch this $#%$ butterfly with out net. It just so happens that this butterfly is one of the world’s most elusive butterflies and proves to be a challenge. So it’s time to bring in the big guns, we then purchase an even bigger net (with extendable pole) in our attempt to finally get hold of this creature.
This carries on for some time (I told you it was an elusive butterfly!). Eventually we give up. After maxing out our credit card at “Net’s R Us”and spending a good part of our time chasing this butterfly. We look around us and realise that the world hasn’t stopped while we were chasing the butterfly. Our famillies are older, our children grown up. There are some experiences that we have perhaps missed, even though they were important to us.
Some people spend their whole lives chasing the butterfly. Sometimes this can become all-consuming, and they never get the chance to refocus their lives on what’s important. So perhaps this is your chance. Your chance to refocus on what’s important in your life.
But if I don’t chase the butterfly with my expensive nets, then I’ll never get what I want!?
Well, what if I were to tell you that there are other ways to bring this butterfly into your life? Why not spend some time making a garden. Very soon, Butterflies will be FLYING TO YOUR GARDEN! No chasing involved 
You can grow this garden and add to it as you want. It won’t take up much time, which leaves you with lots of time to spend with your family and friends and on the other important things in your life.
So focus on the important things in your life, tend to your garden and let the butterflies come to you. Don’t spend your life trying to catch the butterflies and miss out on all the wonderful things life has to offer. Happy gardening…
Tags: butterfly, catch, garden, grateful, happiness, happy, health, kiwi, millionaire, money, Ryan Kilfoil, success, welath
May 6th, 2009 at 3:45 am
Scott guy has a great idea… except I think he’s set the bar too high. He’s looking for 1 million votes (or 1 million words submitted, the language used is ambiguous) - which is just too many.
He had two opportunities for exposure here - first when he decided on this scheme while no one had voted (news coverage on this “crazy” idea) then when the 1 millionth vote was finally cast he would have got a second round of coverage for actually going through.
However, the 1 million votes target is huge. No one will bother with that site long enough for it to reach a mill (at the current rate it would take about a year and a half). This means two things:
1. Scott will not have to tattoo some stupid word to his back (and it would have been stupid).
2. He won’t get his second round of publicity (which would be stronger than the first - having someone _actually_ tattoo some stupid word to his back would almost be worthy of a campbell live spot)
Good on him for trying though.. maybe he can still set the bar a little lower
Regarding your butterfly analogy - how does one “make a garden” in the context of achieving a goal?
May 6th, 2009 at 1:16 pm
Brendan, thanks for your comments.
I agree that Scott has set his sights high - and I would guess that this wouldn’t be the first time he’s done so. In my experience, people often achieve more if they set their sights higher. Sometimes they hit the mark, sometimes they don’t, however those types of people usually make full use of the journey.
The butterfly analogy refers to the law of attraction. For example, if you had a good service that you wanted to market, you could spend money and time targeting the people you think could be interested in that service. Or, you could instead refine the service so that customers are drawn to using the service. Viral marketers do this well. I’d be happy to try and help you with your goals, so feel free to contact me directly.