Goose or Swan?

A little while ago I needed to call out the washing machine engineer. Whilst we were waiting for the machine to do the thing that had made me call him out (which of course, like an obstinate toddler it didn’t) he noticed my trainers by the door and asked if I run. I’d not been running long. I’d started it to keep myself sane during the dark winter months and to raise money for Macmillan nurses in my dad’s memory. The repair man was a very keen runner and when he found out that I was a newbie and, like him, I ran in the local nature reserve he told me that he had a very important piece of advice. I was expecting words of wisdom about staying safe or hydration. Instead he said, “If the Canadian geese are in your path, just carry on, they’ll hiss a bit but they’ll scatter and get out of your way. If there’s a swan in your path. Run the other way!”

I’ve never forgotten that piece of advice even though it was only very recently that I first needed to heed it. As I turned and ran the other way from the swan that had decided the path was the best place to enjoy the sun rather than on the water, it struck me that it’s a good piece of life advice. When we’re busy working towards our goals and we come up against a problem we need to assess whether it’s a goose or a swan. If it’s a minor problem, a goose, we carry on, work through the issue and stay pretty much on the same path. But, if the problem is major, a swan, we need to find a new path. It doesn’t mean we need to change our ambition or goal, we just need to find a new way to get there. It’s important to look at our problems and work out whether they are geese or swans so that we don’t waste precious time, energy and resources either trying to carry on when we really need to find a different route or by abandoning a plan when all it actually needed was a few tweaks.

The washing machine appeared to have fixed itself, but I got a very useful piece of running and, it turns out, life advice for the £40 call out charge.