Have you ever felt an unexplainable urge to complete an original work, yet it seems life gets in the way? If you have a voice in the back of your mind to make an effort that illuminates a new perspective, but distractions pull you away from starting or completing the work, stop for a second and consider the Brimstone butterfly.
With the longest life span of all adult butterflies, the Brimstone butterfly lives just 9-10 months. Imagine this is your life span. What will you do that makes a difference?
If you consider that our lives can be either quite long or fleetingly short, the distractions do not really matter. When you realize the simple truth that life is finite in length, starting now becomes an imperative.
If you start the work now, acknowledging that voice in the back of your mind by simply writing it down, you can begin to realize how you can make a difference.
It’s the starting that makes it all happen. Once you have acknowledged the voice, the urge will strike you on a daily basis to put in a minute here or an hour there, to get the rough draft out, to consider the work and refine it, to bring it to completion.
All that talk we hear about changing the world is just talk until we do something. Whatever your inner voice urges you to do, starting it with acknowledgement makes it real.
Ten months is a lifetime. It is enough time to write a book, create art, make a discovery, tell a story, reveal a new perspective, acknowledge beauty, or simply bring joy to another person. The fact that we often get many iterations of ten months is a blessing.
And what of the distractions? Oh, don’t worry about those. All the distractions in the world are powerless to stop you when you are in the midst of making your difference.
If the Brimstone butterfly could speak (or if its voice was audible), I bet it would tell us all to act now.
Kelly Hobkirk - teaching marketers how to harness strategy, goals, reality, and purpose to connect and do better work.
Kelly Hobkirk has been helping companies succeed in creative ways for nearly 25 years. His work has been featured in Time Magazine, and books by Rockport and Rotovision. Get exclusive articles when you sign up for his monthly newsletter.