I can’t tell you how powerful this story truly is. I would urge you to reflect on it for a few minutes.

Anthony de Mello wrote this story in his book “The Song of the Bird“:

“A man found an eagle’s egg and put it in the nest of a barnyard hen. The eaglet hatched with the brood of chickens 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 neighbour. “He belongs to the sky. We belong to the earth—we are chickens.”

So, the eagle lived and died a chicken, for that is what he thought he was.”

I see a similar trend in our industry. There are many eagles who are living their life just like the Eagle in the story did. They believe they cannot soar.

We live like chickens when we are indeed eagles 🦅.

Moral of the story: If you live with chickens, you will behave like chickens.

Who do you want to be in your Story – a soaring Eagle or a Chicken?