Are You The Tortoise or The Hare, or Both?
In my experience, there have been many times when I just couldn’t wait to get what I wanted. The idea of being patient was a concept that was foreign to me. Instead of holding back, I would act primarily on impulse and naturally I’d find myself being held back by something anyway.
When I decided to go out on my own and pursue the career path that I felt most aligned with, I was on a mission to get to my end point as fast as possible, that I missed out on everything along the way. Inevitably, I was slowed down by external influences in my life as well as internal influences in my body. I oscillated from being the hare to being the tortoise so many times. It was incredibly frustrating because as soon as the tortoise took over in my life, I felt like I wasn’t achieving anything. It seemed like life was rushing on by and I was losing.
Over time, I came to eventually embrace that tortoise in my life and in me. This is a part of who we are that we often want to suppress. Have you ever said to yourself , “I don’t like taking my time” or “It feels like I’m doing nothing and I don’t like it” or “Things are going to slow. I wish they’d speed up”? I used to say those things to myself all the time. In fact, there are times were those statements still pop into my psyche. One of the reasons I used to speak like this was because I didn’t see the value in doing less. I didn’t see the value in slowing down. I only saw the value in being the hare – running the race as fast as I could in order to get to the end.
In the last few years, I found a way to balance out both of these parts of who I am. So instead of going from one extreme to the other, those two parts of me work together, at the same time. I push hard and move quickly, but I also take the time to slow down and smell the roses and appreciate or value what I’ve achieved.
Both of these parts of ourselves are essential when it comes to achieving what we want. We can’t live in this life just being the tortoise or just being the hare. It is necessary to be them equally. If you go too fast, you miss out on so much and if you go too slow, you don’t get anywhere.
My suggestion is as follows: if you’re the hare in your life, learn to appreciate the value of slowing down, and not doing so much, so you can experience life more fully. And, if you’re the tortoise, learn to take action more often, push yourself and get yourself moving. When you learn to model both sides of who you are and value them just as equally, you’re more likely to succeed and reach your goals a lot faster, and with less obstacles along the way.
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