Butterflies

I adore butterflies. Their whole story fascinates me. The images of metamorphosis and positive change are embodied in them. We can learn so many lessons from them that can applied to our own lives as well. 

Transcript

Laura Wakefield: 0:00

When you watch a beautiful butterfly landing on a flower, do you ever think about how powerful the messages of their lives are for us? Metamorphosis? Adaptation? Welcome to The Joyfulicity Podcast. I'm your host, Laura Wakefield.

Laura Wakefield: 0:23

I adore butterflies. Their whole story fascinates me. The images of metamorphosis and positive change are embodied in them. I love that they're both delicate and resilient. They're beautiful, but far more than just a pretty face. They've existed on this planet for about 130 million years, and they come in approximately 20,000 varieties. Pretty impressive longevity. Did you ever stop and wonder why they all don't look alike, though? Why there are so many species of the same basic insect. So many patterns and colors. So many wing sizes and shapes. They could serve their purposes just as well if they were all one inch wide and beige, right? Well, apparently not. How do I know that? Because if they could, they would.

Laura Wakefield: 1:19

Nature is remarkably efficient. Creatures that are best suited to their environments survive, where the weak do not. So those with optimal traits most often live on to continue breeding. Over time, those desirable traits are therefore passed on, becoming the norm for that particular area and ecosystem. For instance, if a group of butterflies lived in a field full of red flowers, they are most likely to avoid being eaten by the local birds if they are also red and blend in. So the red ones have the best chance of living long enough to mate with other camouflaged red ones, producing little red butterfly babies. Yes, I know, I know, caterpillars first, but I'm not trying to be technical here. I'm just making a point. Eventually, in that field, red butterflies will dominate, though. Does this mean that the red butterflies are better and stronger than the blue butterflies? Well, yes, in that particular field, at least. In the garden of blue flowers next door, however, the blue butterflies would have a distinct advantage. They're all butterflies just doing what they have to do to overcome their circumstances. If they look or act slightly different from one another, that makes them no less beautiful and no less legitimate in the butterfly kingdom.

Laura Wakefield: 2:40

That's an extremely simplified explanation of a scientific process called adaptation. Simply put, the secret to continued health, strength, and even survival seems to be flexibility and the willingness to change when needed. What if the butterflies in the red flower field simply refuse to adapt, though? What if they all just decided together that yellow butterflies were the most attractive and perfect variety, so they only sought out yellow butterfly mates? I think it's safe to say that the birds would have a tremendous feast, and it wouldn't be long before there were very few butterflies left. If it was possible to move over to another bed full of yellow flowers, altering their environment altogether, that might work, but staying in the red field while remaining yellow wouldn't end well.

Laura Wakefield: 3:37

Stubbornness and perfectionist ideals wouldn't work for them, and they don't work for us either when we're trying to progress. We also must adapt to keep our goals from dying. To find our own proper patterns that work within our individual environments. There are endless different ways that these principles of adaptability and flexibility apply to us as human beings in our lives, too. For any aspect of your life, from relationships to spirituality to exercise to career choices, to where to live, how to live, how to think, anything that you can think of. There's dozens and dozens of voices out there telling you how it ought to be done. And they're generally telling you from the way that makes sense and resonates with them, and so they'll say things with quite an air of authority. This is right. Everything else is wrong. If you listen to me, you'll be correct. You'll be happy. You'll be successful. If you do it any other way, disaster. And we can get very hung up on that, especially if the messages are coming from people that we trust, like family members or spiritual leaders or people in authority, experts in the field. Now, I'm not saying that we shouldn't have any kind of guidance from anyone. Of course not. None of us should be so arrogant as to think that we shouldn't take advice from people who maybe know more about something than we do. And we definitely want to have overarching value systems in place in our lives. You know, like when it comes to exercise, for instance. Why is exercise important to us for the health and strength of our bodies? Does it matter to us as a principle? But then when we go to apply, how do we incorporate that into our own lives? That's where flexibility and adaptability come into play. For instance, for me, I was trying to be a runner because my father had always been a runner. And so I read all these books on running. But when I tried to become a runner, I talk about this in another podcast episode, but it didn't go very well for me personally. I wasn't any good at it. And what ended up happening is I wasn't exercising at all. I was running away from exercising rather than actually getting fit. And so I had to adapt my ways of thinking in that area to learn to do things that I loved, things that fit into my schedule like dance and hiking that, you know, first of all, they suited me better, but secondly, they were much more likely to actually happen. So that's a very simplified example of an adaptation that I made in my life away from what somebody else was doing, to finding my own way of doing it under the same overarching umbrella of a commitment to fitness. Within relationships, there's a million different ways to structure a relationship. And sometimes I think we get hung up because our relationship doesn't look like our parents' did. or the way that we were always told that it should. And sometimes we end up ending perfectly viable, wonderful relationships because they didn't look the way we expected them to, or we don't even enter into them at all because somebody else told us that that person isn't who we should be with, even though maybe for us, they really were the right person that was bringing us a lot of joy.

Laura Wakefield: 7:08

I think the important part isn't the details of how you're doing something, just like the butterflies. It doesn't matter if you're red or if you're blue, unless you're in a red or a blue field, or unless you as a human have a different temperament. So we have to look at our environments. We have to look at our backgrounds and evaluate how they apply to us now. We have to look at our circumstances, our finances, all kinds of different things, and then adapt our overarching value system to fit and to suit. And I think a lot of discontent and a lot of unhappiness in this life comes from trying to proverbially put a square peg into a round hole and do things the way everybody else is doing them when they don't really suit us. Going after a high paying corporate career because we think that's what success is supposed to mean. When for us, success doesn't mean that at all. And we're miserable in that job. We're miserable in that life or vice versa. Maybe we've been taught that to try to go after a high paying career is somehow immoral. Like there are people that really have a hang up with making a lot of money, even though we feel a drive and a passion for moneymaking.

Laura Wakefield: 8:31

There's very few rights and wrongs that are hard, fast in this life. There are value systems that are important, but the details need to remain flexible, because your temperament is not the same as your neighbor's temperament. Your needs are not the same as theirs. So many factors come into play in determining how to live our life. So the ability to be adaptable is critical to our happiness. Stress is at the root of so much illness, both physical and mental illnesses in our society today. And a lot of that stress, in my view, is coming from people trying to live lives that they just simply aren't suited to and just digging in because that's how they think that they're supposed to do it. When there's other lives out there that they might be very happy in and far less stressed. Or, again, going after the stressful things that someone's told us we shouldn't. Maybe they've told you that good moms don't do that. Good Christians don't do that. Good people aren't like that. But the problem is, you're going to hear those messages coming from almost every side of an issue. So no matter what you choose to do with your life, somebody isn't going to approve. Somebody isn't going to like it. So the most important thing is for you to become very clear in what truly matters deep down at the core of yourself, because you're the one that's going to have to live that life. So stand fast. Take the time to ask yourself the question. Sometimes we don't even ask the question. Life was kind of handed to us, you know, the religion that we grew up in or we inherited the family business or maybe our parents set us up with the girl next door and we're meant to live in this small town forever right next door to our family. And that's not what we want. If it is what you want, that's fine. But taking the time in your life to unpack and to look at the different aspects and ask, is this really serving me? Is this really who I am? Is this really what I want? Right down to the clothes that we wear. How many of us actually have wardrobes that even reflect what we like? We as a society have been conditioned to do what everyone else tells us that we ought to do, what we ought to wear, what we ought to eat, what we ought to believe in. And it's a real sign of emotional maturity, in my opinion, to start to question all of it. Now, it doesn't mean that the answers ultimately might be that exactly the way you're doing it is exactly the way you want to do it. And that's wonderful, if so. Sometimes just because you ask the question doesn't mean that you're going to have to change anything. You might sit back and say, is this really what I want? And realize, yeah, actually, it's bringing me a lot of happiness. Then by all means, carry on. But oftentimes, when you really stop to ask the question, is this the life that I want to be living? The answer comes back as a resounding no. And sometimes it might feel overwhelming and complicated to make the changes that you need to make. Sometimes it might ruffle some feathers of people who are used to you the way that you are and that like you doing things the way that you're doing them. Not everybody's going to be thrilled if you step up and say, hey, this thing that I've always been doing, I'm not doing it anymore. By the way, I'm going to be moving. Or by the way, I'm quitting this job. By the way, I'm ending this relationship. Whatever it might be for you, it's not always an easy process. But when you think about the butterflies, it might just be critical to your survival.

Laura Wakefield: 12:38

And I don't necessarily mean actually staying alive, although sometimes it can be critical to that because stress is such a killer. But there's more to you than just whether or not you're actually breathing. Are you actually thriving? So when I say survival, not just of your physical body, but of your emotional strength and viability. We don't want to just exist. We want to thrive. We want to magnify. And we want to feel joy in our lives and to be able to share that joy with other people. So ask yourself the questions. Are there any adaptations that I need to be making in my life right now to get to that point? And you might be surprised what answers come to you when you take the time to do that.

Laura Wakefield: 13:27

Back to the butterflies for a minute. Remember as kids, you always had butterflies in the classroom and you watch them go through the whole life cycle from caterpillar to, I don't remember anymore, but chrysalis. And then they emerge as the butterfly and you set them free. And it's always a super fun thing in elementary school to watch the whole butterfly life cycle. That is kind of how we are too, though, when we're going through this process of flexibility. Sometimes we discover that we just can't stay a caterpillar anymore. Caterpillar life was okay for a while, but we're not contented with that anymore. The process to get to butterfly stage where you can fly sometimes is going to feel a little bit constricting like a chrysalis. We're going to feel a little trapped, perhaps, and a little bit uncomfortable as we're figuring all of that out. But it's worth that price. Sometimes we have to fight our way out of there. But it's worth the price to emerge as a butterfly that we're meant to be and to have the wings to fly. Because those wings are what makes us beautiful and unique and individual. It's kind of interesting to me that I don't know that a butterfly is really receiving most of the benefit of their beauty. I don't know if they can see how pretty they are or if they even care about that. They're just living their lives and flying. but we get to see their beauty. So some of the reason that we do the things that we do is to bless other people, to show other people that it can be done, to set that example for others of how to become a butterfly person. I saw a meme the other day that said, you can't speak butterfly language to caterpillar people. And I loved that because, you know, bear in mind, like I said, not everybody's going to be super supportive and super thrilled when you start to make changes. Even if you're emerging as a beautiful butterfly, they liked you as a caterpillar because maybe they could control you a little bit more there. Or maybe they just felt more comfortable with you there. They don't know what to do with you in butterfly state. It's not necessarily important to win everybody over to your case. It's not important. always to just wait to start to make the changes until everybody's on board, until you have everybody's support, until you have everybody's approval, because that just might not come. It might not come. And that's really, really hard when you finally are willing to come out of your chrysalis and say, this is who I am. This is who I want to be. This is what makes me happy. And the support doesn't come because that happens sometimes. It really does. And it's heartbreaking when it does. But take heart because there is a community for you out there of people who will support you the way that you are. And those are your people. So don't keep trying to speak butterfly language if somebody else is stuck in caterpillar language, because sometimes you just won't be able to get through. And that's okay. That's okay. Sometimes it just takes time and that support will come later. But what's important is that you're being true to yourself because the message that you're sending in regards to that is having an impact, even on the people that sometimes initially don't seem supportive. They're watching you. Sometimes they're not supportive because they themselves are too afraid to make the changes that they want to make. And sometimes when people are stuck in miserable lives, there's this weird psychological need to keep other people stuck, too. Or to justify the idea that change isn't possible. Because if change is impossible, then they don't have to make change. But if you go out and make the change, then they can't stay in that mindset anymore. And so they want to reject you so that they don't have to confront that idea. It doesn't mean that you've done anything wrong to rock that boat. So go ahead and rock it. Do it gently. You also don't have to come out you know, guns blazing, so to speak, to vilify the people that aren't changing with you. Everybody's on their own time frame and they may just need to remain a caterpillar for a little bit longer or maybe forever. Maybe those things are working for them. You don't have to change everybody right along with you is the point that I'm making. Just worry about yourself and find the people that are meant for you now that will support you now.

Laura Wakefield: 18:08

There's something kind of magical about going into one of those butterfly, I don't know what they call them, but where you walk in and there's just thousands and thousands of butterflies and they're landing on you. I went to one in Key West one time and it was just such a fairy tale environment with all of these beautiful varieties of butterflies flying around. And I think what's so intriguing about them is that they're so delicate. And that's an important aspect of this. We don't have to be abrasive to be adaptable. We don't have to be even strong. Strength is something that is often misunderstood. And so we think we can't make changes because we feel scared or because we don't feel strong enough. Just start walking. Butterflies are super delicate, but they're one of the most resilient insects in the history of the world if you study their story. So it's okay if you feel a little weak to start walking toward that change and adaptability. Don't wait until you feel strong. Just think about the butterflies and all the varieties and all the different ways and the choices that you can make. And that you are okay as your own unique individual being with your thoughts, your feelings, your ways of doing things. And again, it doesn't mean that you don't take bits and pieces from experts. Of course you do. Somebody that knows more about this than you might have something that they can teach you. So I'm not suggesting that we don't listen to a lot of different people. but more that we take all the information that we receive and we process it through the understanding that ultimately the decisions are going to be ours. We're the ones that are going to live with them, right or wrong. Sometimes we might make the wrong ones and that's okay. Hopefully we learn something during that process. But we're the ones that are going to live with that. And I, in my life, have had times when I kind of got pressured to do things that somebody else wanted me to do that turned out to be very bad decisions for me. And I would have been much, much better off in my life to have made the decision that I thought was correct in the first place. And that in and of itself was a learning experience for me. Ultimately, I was responsible for the fact that I listened to somebody else. So always, always, always, the responsibility lies with you, but the potential for joy is also within your power. Have a great day, everybody.

Laura Wakefield: 21:08

Thank you for joining me today on The Joy fulicity Podcast. If you enjoyed this episode, please like and share and come follow me on all major social media sites at Joy fulicity or on my website, joyfulicity.com. You can follow the link in the description for this episode to all of the places that we can connect. Have a great day, everybody. And remember, dare to dream, plan to play, live to learn.