A young raven falls out of its nest in the dark of night. He sees several ravens and other birds head off, soaring away to seek shelter. The sound of thunder and flashes of light warn him of the peril of an incoming storm. Watching all the other birds fly and glide gracefully, the little raven leaps into the air but barely manages to get off the ground and lands in a muddy puddle.
Frustrated and confused by the seeming ease the other birds experience in their flights, the poor raven starts to get flustered, and splashes the stale muddy water all about.
As the thunder continues to get louder, the raven hears another loud noise approaching. From behind a group of trees, the baby raven spots an older bison running towards him. As the elder bison approaches, she sees the young raven flapping its wings all over the place, desperate to try to soar in the sky but thrashing in every direction and getting nowhere.
As the bison stares at the raven, she realizes that if he continues to do what he is doing, he’ll continue to get nowhere. The elder bison speaks to the raven and asks him if he is trying to escape the wrath of the storm. The raven replies that he is trying to fly away from the storm but fell out of his nest and got stuck in the stinky mud. The raven asked the bison why she was running in this direction. Running towards the storm was counterintuitive and was against everything the young raven had learned from his peers.
With a thunderous clap of thunder, the elder bison shared the wisdom of generations of bison before her on how to escape adversity.
The first step is to EVALUATE your situation, young one. Where are you now? What’s coming towards you? What can we determine is not going to change? How will we know if we are moving in the right direction?
Right now you are stuck in the mud and there is a storm coming through. It will start off light but probably get much worse in the coming hours. You need to seek safety. What will be the safest place to stay when the storm comes through? The first step is not to try and hope you are soaring with your peers, but to find a way to get to dry ground.
So now you take the second step, which is to set your SIGHTS for where you want to go. It’s great to have audacious goals, but you don’t get to the top of the mountain all at once. You set your sights on smaller, more realistic and achievable goals and stay focused on where you want to get to.
The third step is all about you. CONTROL the controllables. Reaching those goals might be tough. There may be obstacles thrown your way, but you can control what you bring to the situation. Control your focus, attitude and effort.
When those obstacles come you work on step four and you ADJUST. Every obstacle is going to present different circumstances. Our job is not to settle on being too comfortable. It is to always try to find a better way and experiment with our solutions every day. The bison are the only animals that teach their young to move towards the storm. Learn how to embrace the suck of the storm for a short while, make adjustments as the storms move but be comfortable being uncomfortable for a short period of time in order to successfully escape the harshest of storms.
Step five is about finding PERSPECTIVE. It’s so easy to look at the world from where we are at. But sometimes the tiny ant, or the soaring hawk can tell us more about our circumstances. They inform us about areas we may be blind to. Knowing these blind spots help us adjust.
The sixth, and final, step is about the ENERGY you bring. The ones who don’t make it through get focused on the negative things around them. They focus on the cold of the rain, the loudness of the thunder, the aggressive winds and the extreme brightness of the lightning. They tend to get so caught up in each little thing along their path that they stop focusing on the positive feelings of reaching each of their goals. They stop bringing the energy to fight against the storm and get through to the other side, where opportunity lies.
You are now ready to “ESCAPE” the wise bison declared.
So, the young raven begins to evaluate his situation. He decides the first step is to work his way to the edge of the puddle and away from the deeper mud. He sees one side has the root of a plant sticking out from the mud and, if he can reach that, he could pull himself out of the mud. The raven focuses all his energy on his next target, takes several small jumps towards the root and is able to use the root to pull himself out of the puddle. Now the raven can take control of the next step to seeking safety.
The bison tells the raven that it is ok to fall into the mud, but you never want to get stuck in it. Don’t get comfortable with being stuck. Find a small way to adjust. A journey of a hundred miles starts with one step. You just took your first steps.
Not sure where to head to next, the raven asked the wise bison for her perspective and direction. I suggest we head together towards the storm. There will be some rough patches but we can make adjustments to get through them along the way. There are some hills that we can navigate to in the north where you should be able to find shelter if need be. The young raven has doubts about this plan but just as he was about to express them, the wise, elder bison told him to have faith in his abilities. To keep up his positive attitude, to stay focused on the path and never give up.
The young raven set his sights onto the next goal. He spotted a patch of trees to the north that should help him get some better perspective on their ultimate destination. The bison and raven headed out together towards the trees. While they adjusted their direct path to avoid some other puddles and a few boulders on the way, they reached the trees and scouted for their next stop.
The next area of trees was quite a distance away. The bison told the raven that he needs to prepare to fly in order to make it there. The frightened raven had self doubt in his abilities. The bison told him to remember to have faith in himself and if others could do it, why couldn’t he. She told the raven to take a deep breath and visualize himself soaring towards the trees. After a few moments of building his confidence, the raven closed his eyes, took a deep breath and then began his flight towards the next group of trees, with the bison running below him. They battled with the currents of the wind, but reached their next destination.
It took them multiple stops until they reached the hills and found a small cave to stay in until the worst of the storm passed. As they rested in the cave, the bison told the raven to be prepared to learn how to chase opportunities with his new skills tomorrow and get to the other side of the mountain.
