Wednesday, May 23, 2007

Blind Ambition Is For The Birds


Two small birds decided to begin building a nest inside the vent over the cook-top from my kitchen. (Why the builder of the house did not have this vent previously bird proofed is beyond me, but that is another story).

My wife heard the commotion of the nest construction in the wall, which lead me to Home Depot to buy some mesh to close their off their entry. I removed all the twigs, stems, twine and other nesting materials (there were no eggs yet, so if you are one of those who value nature over humans, do not jump on me!) and sealed the opening.

Or so I thought.

These crafty little birds were industrious, and were able to pry the mesh away and regain entry to the vent.

I admire the birds for having that much ambition, but they did not know what they were up against. Again I removed all their nesting materials and did a much better job of blocking them from building their home in my cook-top vent. No matter how focused they are, I am not going to let them into that vent to raise their family.

This got me thinking about life. Sometime I pick the wrong things to focus on and no matter how much I try, I will not achieve the desired result. Someone or something is there to deflect my success. I can get sidetracked on the detractors and lose sight of my actual goals, and the reasons I am chasing them in the first place.

How about you? Have you ever gone after something, and gotten side-tracked in the details, only to discover you were off track? These are the times when we need to reassess our goals and aspirations and make sure that we are clear on our personal motivation. The birds eventually moved on to build their nest somewhere else. This time I wish them all the luck in the world, but if they had blind ambition to only go after my vent, they would have lost.

The real goal of these birds was to build a nest....not to build one at Thom Singer's house. It is that clarity of the real goal that allowed them to move on to a new location and lay those eggs.

Have A Great Day.

thom
www.thomsinger.com

**** The ABC's of Networking is now available at Amazon.com.

1 comment:

David Zinger said...

Not only a post for the birds but to ensure our "bird brain" does not blind us to our purpose. We can always change our strategy to make our nest. Good story Thom.