The Ugly Duckling

Sunday, 13th January 2008

Today we had a buddhist ceremony at my folks’ place and we invited the resident buddhist monk along. During the ceremony the monk told the old fairytale The Ugly Duckling but unfortunatley he got the story wrong and forgot to mention one crucial detail in the story. Without going into too much detail, he told the story by saying how one duckling was very different from all the other ducklings and they all used to pick on him because he was different; and how one day when the duckling was all grown up everyone admired him because he was quite stunning. His point was that one day people will pick on us but in time to come when we’re all grown up people will admire us.

He forgot to mention one important key aspect of the story...the duckling was never a duck, he was a swan!

How the story’s meant to be told is that the ugly duckling was picked on and outcast by the other ducks but one day he embarked upon some swans, who immediately took him under their wings and as he grew older he realised that he was never a duck but in actual fact a swan and quite a lovely one at that.

So what’s the point of the whole story??? Well thats the beautiful thing about fairy tales you can extract whatever meaning you like from them, so in this case I’m going to extract it as follows.

1. When you hang around the wrong people, obviously things aren’t going to work out for you. People may tease you for not fitting in, or ignore you or cause you all sorts of grief for whatever their reasons be.

2. But when you find your niche, and your thing, then you will blossom into something great and really start to enjoy life and live it to its fullest.

So if you find yourself stuck in a rut (perhaps with a bout of Hamster Syndrome) perhaps you should look at the groups of people that you interact with closely and see if you might have picked up some bad habbits.

Last week I mentioned Robert Kiyosaki’s book - Cashflow and in it is a very interesting exercise on helping you become a better person. It goes like this:

1. Write down the 6 people that you interact with on a daily basis. Not just your close friends and family, anyone whom you spend most of your time with frequently. Just the top 6.

2. Work out if these people have characteristics and personalities that reflect the sort of person that you want to be.

Its a very interesting exercise that really opens your eyes up. Keep in mind that it is no reflection on the people that you hang out with, but more so designed to make you think about if these people can really motivate and inspire you to become the person that you want to be in life.

For example, if you have dreams and ambitions of being debt free by the age of 30, but the top 6 people that you hang out with love to go out and spend a lot of money and don’t save at all, then chances are that it might take you a bit longer to reach your goals...or never reach them at all.

Robin Sharma is a passionate advocate of having good conversations with good people as it really expands your mind into new possibilities, or helps you to reinforce direction in your life. In this instance I think its excellent advice.

So I challenge you to list the top 6 people that you interact with on a daily basis and ask yourself “do they reflect the sort of person that I want to be?”

Dream, Build, Inspire, Lead!

AJ~

Author: AJ Kulatunga

Category:

dream, inspire, exercise