The Rabbit Who Learned to Swim (and Forgot How to Run)

There’s this old parable about a rabbit who goes to school.

It starts off great. The teachers figure out pretty quickly that this rabbit can run. Like, really run. Fast, agile, built for it. Everyone agrees — this is clearly its strength.

Then they get to the part of the curriculum where all the animals have to learn to swim. “Every student needs to be well-rounded,” they say. “Can’t have gaps.”

So they start giving the rabbit swimming lessons. Day after day, they haul it into the water. It hates every second of it. But eventually, it learns — not to love it, not to thrive — just enough to not drown. They call that progress.

But something else happens.

The rabbit stops running.

The joy it had, the thing it was actually good at — it fades. School becomes something it dreads. And the longer it spends trying to be average at swimming, the further it drifts from what it was actually built to do.

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Here’s the point:

You don’t need to turn your weaknesses into strengths. That’s not the goal.

You just need to neutralize them enough that they don’t get in the way.

Your strengths are what move you forward — they’re what make you different, valuable, worth hiring or keeping around. Weaknesses? Just make sure they don’t drag you under.

Not every rabbit needs to love swimming. But if it falls in a river, it better know how to get to the bank.

So yeah — learn to swim if you must. But don’t forget to run. That’s what you’re here for.