A Story About Success: Don’t Be The Hyena That Eats The Duck

You know of the story about the hyena and the duck? If you don’t, then here is how it goes…

The hyena is hungry and prays for the heavens to give him something to eat. After days of searching for a meal, he stumbles upon a duck’s eggs. From experience, he knows that they are nutritious and just what he needs. So, what he does is that he eats all of them.

While he is at it, he hears the duck approaching and so he goes and hides. And something amazing happens: the duck lays more eggs and again goes on its errands. The hyena, so grateful to the heavens for providing him with a meal, goes and eats all the eggs again. This happens for some time, and that is when the hyena stumbles upon a brilliant idea!

Instead of waiting every time for the duck to lay the eggs, why not just eat the whole duck and then get all the eggs that the duck is hiding in its belly? Brilliant, right? And it made perfect sense because it is absolutely not fair for the duck to keep on keeping the hyena waiting. 

And so the hyena, knowing that opportunity knocks only once, goes ahead and eats the duck. It’s obvious what happens next: he dies of hunger because he never really discovered where the duck was hiding its eggs. He died frustrated because he thought that the little duck had outsmarted him!

We see this happening every day. The entrepreneur who is so eager for success that he ends up over-stretching his business. There is the person who thinks that knowing all that he can about his or her business or profession is a waste of time. The start-up that is so eager to expand that it gets itself into some pretty bad contractual agreements. There is the business establishment that thinks that overcharging its customers is a great key to success. There are so many people who get “brilliant” ideas that end up causing them to crash and burn. And the success stories still continue to be written.