Now I’m sure you’ve heard of the story of the tortoise and the hare?
“The hare is very confident of winning, so it stops during the race and falls asleep. The tortoise continues to move very slowly but without stopping and finally it wins the race. The moral lesson of the story is that you can be more successful by doing things slowly and steadily than by acting quickly and carelessly”.
Have you ever thought that to GO SLOW or SLOWER you might achieve more?
If nothing else COVID-19 and lockdown this time last year taught us, was that we can get caught up in the ‘carousel of life’ wishing we could ‘stop the bus’, but not knowing how or even when. COVID-19 and the lockdown caused the whole world to stop and when we did, we had time to think, to breathe, to reflect, to contemplate where we are, where we are going, what our options are or might be and decide on options and opportunities open to us. It also helped us to adjust our priorities – the important thing like our health, our families, our friendships ARE the most important thing.
So why is it before COVID-19 and lockdown we were GO GO GO and went fast, and now we are creeping back into that same rut or routine.
When we are rushing around almost ‘running’ from task to task, person to person, job to job, we get tired, lose energy, drive, focus and motivation. We lose sense of direction and picking up on any ideas, opportunities along the way, let alone making mistakes because we’ve rushed what we’ve done.
I believe we can achieve much more if we slow down, take our time and consider what we are doing and why. This does require planning and thought, but even although we may move at a slower pace we may get there faster, and the outcome is likely to be much better.
Being on the treadmill of life, work or business can have a negative impact on us in many ways. It can and does affect our stress levels, which in turn affects our behaviour and our ability to do a good job.
When we slow down and take our time, we allow our mind to be more creative. Having space to percolate ideas and to attract creativity takes energy and time.
The quality of what we do reduces, we drop the ball, make mistakes, let people down and some of these errors could cause us major short, medium or long term problems. These problems may be to our health, business or work.
We need to look after ourselves and take it easy. Enjoy the journey and as they say take time out to ‘smell the roses’.
The message therefore is rushing around can be very stressful and cause us to be less productive and reduces energy levels to a point of exhaustion, physical and mental.
Give a thought to the hare and the tortoise and the pace you are at and instead of charging forward, go down a gear, take time to be more creative and see what the difference is.
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