The Goose and The Golden Eggs

(I do not own this photo.)

I know your familiar with this short story "The Goose that laid the Golden Eggs" way back when we were young. There were many versions of this but the intention of the story was still the same. As you can see on the photo, this was based on the fable by Aesop. So, who was Aesop?

I searched through Google and found that Aesop was a slave and a well-known storyteller way back around 500 BC. Imagine how long his stories exist? About 2500 years now and still continuing to expand since our nursery rhymes and first reading books mostly are from Aesop's fable. If way back then they exercised royalties, Aesop would be one of the richest men in the world in his time.

Anyways, my intention of writing a blog out of this is to share with you the deeper wisdom that I got with the help of Stephen Covey. Who is Stephen Covey? He is an internationally known speaker and author on leadership, personal effectiveness and change, and interpersonal relationships. I have been reading his book entitled "The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People". I got this from a friend. We decided to exchange books. I let her borrow mine which was Rich Dad's Cashflow Quadrant by Robert Kiyosaki.

Honestly, I am still reading the Habit 1 which was being proactive because I reread the book twice from the start. The book is really rich with ideas even if you read only less than 5 pages, you already get something, a bigger value and from there you can already reflect and meditate on it. So, going back to my topic, Stephen Covey shared about the goose and the golden egg part of his overview on the book. Overview alone can give quite a thinking and internalizing. Therefore, I highly recommend this book with you guys. This is a book with great great value. You get more, more as in more than you paid for the book. I promise you.

When I was young reading this short story, the lesson that I got that time was about being greedy, that you'll lose everything when you have greed inside your heart. Basically, that's the moral lesson you get but Stephen explained that there's more to that story. He represented the golden eggs as the producing asset (P) or shall I say  anything that you desire and the goose as the production capability (PC) or the one producing what you desire. According to him to be an effective individual, we must exercise the P/PC (Production/Production Capability) Balance. In this way, you get what you desire but not damaging the thing or hurting the one that made it possible or else you get nothing at all.

Let me give you example. On my last blog I mentioned that I have a Life Coach right? He is really good in everything and he was so organized. He really wanted to teach about God, life, leadership and how to be a successful person. In fact, he offered his classes for free. So, I together with my close friend and boyfriend grabbed the opportunity. Our Life Coach had a vision to build a community that grows it's own crops, live simply and practice organic living. For this example, this is the golden egg of my Life Coach and we as his students are the goose because together with our coach we will be living in that community. During our sessions, he always reprimanded us about little mistakes that we had done and it won't stop until the day ended. At first I thought that perhaps it was the best way to learn wisdom to be reprimanded all the time. Slowly and slowly his students stopped attending his classes anymore, with us it started out with my boyfriend. After a month, I felt really hurt that I cannot take in anymore condemnations and deep inside me I felt there was really something wrong. That's why I quit about 9 months ago. Just this month, I and my boyfriend saw our colleagues and we heard about him that he had only one student left. So, as you can see, if he will keep hurting his students especially their ego it will take him a lot of time to build a community which he dreamed few years ago. 

Killing the goose is like using force or strength to get what you want. If you notice and aware of yourselves about this, usually we resort to force or strength in order to have what we desire. When my younger sister won't obey me, I shout at her. When my classmates won't listen to my idea, I yell at them. When my subordinates won't deliver what I expected to them, I reprimanded them. One more thing, I usually found this in movies, when the protagonist won't cooperate, the antagonist will kill him or his loved ones. You see? It is evident in our society that we kill the goose most of the time and I hope that you are aware of this. Once we are aware and accept this fact, we have the power to change it. 

I hope you get the idea or the deeper wisdom I am talking about a while ago. Besides, you can read the book of Stephen Covey because he cited a couple of examples there for you to better understand it. Happy Easter everyone!!!