Tag Archives: Butterflues

Advice: Chase Butterflies

by Woody

STRAW_CoverWoody’s new book STRAWBERRIES IN WINTERTIME: Essays on Life, Love, and Laughter is available for Pre-Order HERE NOW! In time for the holidays!

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My Your Heart Go Aflutter in New Year

Chase butterflies.

When asked recently to write a brief essay on the topic of “A Letter Of Advice To My 21-Year-Old Self,” that was my answer in a nutshell. Chase butterflies.

I will soon explain more fully.1butterfly

But first let me say that chasing butterflies also seems timely advice, for anyone of any age, as we begin our 2016 journey around the sun.

Even though spring is yet a far ways off, the turning of the calendar pages from the old year to the new always brings to my mind a butterfly emerging from its cocoon. The caterpillar’s past has been shed and left behind; the world is anew and bright and full of promise.

Moreover, most butterflies emerge in the morning – again, the image of a new year’s fresh beginning. Indeed, New Year resolutions are goals for a personal metamorphosis of sorts.

But my advice to chase butterflies is more than metaphorical.

Remember in your youth when you raced after Monarchs with a butterfly net? There are few images of girlhood or boyhood more carefree.

Perhaps you did not even catch any butterflies. That didn’t even matter because the joy was in the running, in the sport of it, in the zig-zagging through a field until you were out of breath – the breathlessness, in part, from laughing at your “failure” to catch the elusive fluttering prey.

Lesson from the child: when is the last time as an adult you didn’t let “failure” get you down and instead happily laughed it off?

Yes, we would all do well to pursue our adult passions with this same sense of joy and play as we did racing barefooted in the grass with a cheesecloth net-on-a-stick in our hands.

Chasing butterflies also means embracing things that scare you – things that make your stomach flutter with nervousness.

As I wrote in that letter to my 21-year-old college self: “Remember the swarm of butterflies doing cartwheels in your stomach the first time you asked out that gorgeous girl you are now dating? Spoiler alert, Woody, that works out marvelously even 34 years later!”

The butterflies of trying new things and taking chances should not be avoided. The riskier thing, truly, is to remain inside a safe cocoon. As the Roman poet Virgil noted, “Fortune favors the bold.”

Fortune favors butterfly chasers, I say.

Or as Mark Twain so wisely put it: “Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.”

And, he might have well added, do things that make the butterflies in your belly dance.

Eleanor Roosevelt knew this, famously advising: “Do one thing every day that scares you.”1Bold

If the word “scares” scares you, keep in mind that “frightening” is a close cousin of “exciting.” So when a new challenge or unchartered adventure or out-of-your-comfort-zone opportunity gives you butterflies, run (BEGINITAL)towards(ENDITAL) it not from it!

Throw off your bowlines and learn a new language. Take guitar lessons. Or golf lessons. Enroll in a painting class. Sign up for volunteer work.

Train for a marathon. Learn to surf. Climb Mount Whitney.

Start writing that novel you have long felt you had inside you. Ask someone on a date – or accept the invite.

Join Toastmasters and tackle your fear of public speaking. Tackle a career change from the safe job you have, but doesn’t excite you, to the one of your dreams.

Travel. Explore. Go sailing. Go for it!

I closed my letter to my younger self with John Wooden’s “7-Point Creed,” which I consider to be concise wisdom of great breadth and depth:

Be true to yourself.

Make each day your masterpiece.

Help others.

Drink deeply from good books.

Make friendship a fine art.

Build a shelter against a rainy day.

Pray for guidance and give thanks for your blessings every day.

And, I concluded, add this eighth point: Chase butterflies.

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Woody Woodburn writes a weekly column for The Ventura County Star and can be contacted at WoodyWriter@gmail.com.

Wooden&Me_cover_PRCheck out my new memoir WOODEN & ME: Life Lessons from My Two-Decade Friendship with the Legendary Coach and Humanitarian to Help “Make Each Day Your Masterpiece”