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Colorado is one of my favorite places to visit. I often try to go to the Rocky Mountains at least twice a year for skiing.
Thanks to its distinctive topographical landscape, Colorado is one of the few places where buffalo and cows coexist.
Studying how cows and buffalo react to storms can teach us a lot about success and leadership.
When cows sense that a storm's brewing, they'll often do what's completely natural, they run in the opposite direction, trying to get away from it. The problem with this is that cows don’t run very fast.
Due to their less-than-stellar speed, storms often catch up to cows. And since cows don't know any better, they keep running in the same direction, along with the storm, maximizing their time spent in it and prolonging their pain and suffering.
Before thinking about how ridiculous cows are, you might want to consider how often we humans do this same thing.
Sure, most of us are smart enough not to try and outrun a storm. But how often do we try to outrun other types of challenges we face in life?
Many of us spend a significant portion of our lives constantly attempting to avoid the difficulties that come with the challenging situations that our choices have placed us in.
For example, those who aren't in good health give excuses for why they can't do something about it or why it doesn't matter. Those having trouble with their marriage frequently try to avoid the challenging but necessary conversations required to mend their relationship. Those who are debt-ridden look for ways to avoid paying those debts off while piling more debts on top of their already heavy load. [><]When it comes to building a successful business, new entrepreneurs often try to do everything by themselves at first to save a dime, refusing to delegate necessary marketing and sales tasks, all while drowning in their massive piles of work. And instead of investing money to leverage the right products and services that could yield them a rewarding ROI, they spend far more time running with the storm before finally realizing there's a better and wiser way to do things.The crucial realization that successful people have made that not everyone else may have is this:
Successful people understand that putting off problems and necessary tasks, or running from them all together, only makes things worse. This only delays and extends the pain.
Instead of acting like cows, successful people imitate buffalo.
Buffalo are much wiser in how they approach storms. They wait for the storm to roll towards them before charging headfirst into it and straight through it. By confronting the storm head-on, buffalo minimize the discomfort, time, and frustration they endure by getting to the other side as quickly as possible.
Notably, both animals could experience the same storm and have roughly the same amount of time to assess it. Still, they react differently and, as a result, have vastly different experiences.
Hopefully, you can see what a great metaphor this is for the human experience.
We all encounter different storms in life, challenges that we can either face headfirst or run from. While we may not be able to control the storms that come our way entirely, we can control how we react to them.
The most successful people in life are the ones who embrace the buffalo mentality. They dive headfirst into the challenges they face instead of procrastinating because they understand that delay and indulgence are merely interest-bearing creditors. And because they face their storms directly, they get to the other side much faster than most.
What storms are you facing right now in your life and business? Is there anything you can do today to be more like the buffalo and face those challenges straight on?
