What Do Butterflies Have to Do with Your Career? (2024)

Recently I was talking with a client about “The Butterflies Effect”, no not the “The Butterfly Effect” that most people know about. He was talking about butterflies. Each week he challenges himself to do one thing that makes him feel butterflies in his stomach, one thing that makes him nervous, one thing that makes him step out of his comfort zone. This could mean:

• attending a networking event even though he is an introvert
• engaging an author in the discussion comments of an article
• joining a fitness class for a specific type of exercise you haven’t done in years

It is so much easier to continue the same patterns we feel comfortable in. Sometimes, though, we need to break out of those comfortable areas to make a change in our careers or in our lives. I took the challenge from my client. I try to do something out my comfort zone once each week or every other week. I encourage you to take the challenge to do something that gives you ‘butterflies’ too.

Unless you try to do something beyond what you have already mastered, you will never grow.

- Ralph Waldo Emerson