The eagle who died thinking he was a chicken

I love to remind myself of this quote from Jim Kwik: “You are the greatest project you will ever work on.”

It’s our most important job in our family business to work on ourselves. We are our greatest project. 

Here’s a very sad story of what happens if you don’t take the job seriously of becoming who you are supposed to become.

A man found an eagle’s egg and put it in a nest of a barnyard hen. The eaglet hatched with the brood of chicks and grew up with them.

All his life the eagle did what the barnyard chicks did, thinking he was a barnyard chicken. He scratched the earth for worms and insects. He clucked and cackled. And he would thrash his wings and fly a few feet into the air.

Years passed and the eagle grew very old. One day he saw a magnificent bird above him in the cloudless sky. It glided in graceful majesty among the powerful wind currents, with scarcely a beat of its strong golden wings.

The old eagle looked up in awe. ‘Who’s that?’ he asked.

‘That’s the eagle, the king of the birds,’ said his neighbor. ‘He belongs to the sky. We belong to the earth - we’re chickens.’ So the eagle lived and died a chicken, for that’s what he thought he was. (Anthony De Mello)

Keep becoming.

We are all eagles. We have to believe it.

Belief precedes ability. 

That’s the work. 

Onward,

Matt