I learned this analogy from one of my favourite books ‘7 Habits of highly effective’ by Steven Covey. It genuinely inspired so much change in my life and I still use it to make sure I’m focusing my efforts in the right place. If you’re unfamiliar of the story of the goose and the golden eggs I’ll do my best to summarise it.
There once was a goose which laid golden eggs. The owner of the goose seen an opportunity for him to get rich super quick. They way that he planned to do this was by cutting open the goose and taking the gold from within the goose, unfortunately for both the goose and the owner, when he cut open the goose it was empty. The lesson that the owner learned was that instead of being greedy and focusing only on the gold he should have taken better of the care of the goose.
The same theory can be applied to countless situations in our lives. For example, sometimes people say that they want to have a 6 pack and all they do is focus on the 6 pack itself (the golden egg) what they should be doing instead is focusing on the exercise and their diet (the goose). The golden egg might be what you want but unless you take care of the goose you won’t ever get it. The concept sounds really basic and you probably already think that you’re doing this but it’s very easy to overlook.
I want you to reflect on what you want out of life, go grab a piece of paper and write down all the goals that you want to achieve (your egg). Now next to it I want you to write down what systems or steps you’ll have to focus on to achieve that goal (your goose). It become much clearer with this analogy to understand the importance of focusing on what you’re doing instead of the goal as this is what will take you towards the goal.
I think this message is so underrated in today's society as everyone is trying to find shortcuts on how to get their egg. We’re all trying the ‘get rich quick’ schemes or trying to get the ‘secrets to success’ but the truth is they never work. If you spend your time looking after the goose the egg will come by itself. Make it so that you love taking care of your goal or in other words love the process.
Stop just thinking about what you want, think about how you can achieve it and put all your energy into that.
The area in which I find that this advice/analogy can be the most useful is happiness. Everyone has the goal of being happy yet very few people start to look at the systems that are in place to make them happy. Most people say that they want to be happy but do very little to make themselves happy. Just like the owner should have take care of their goose; we need to take care of things that are impacting our happiness. If you were to figure out what would make you happy and start to execute on that you’ll see yourself becoming much happier.