Recently, I’ve been thinking about the moral of Aesop’s fable, The Tortoise and the Hare.
You read it when you were a child. Yes?
We know the tortoise wins the race because of his deliberate pace, while the rabbit- although faster moving- often stops to rest.
The implicit message being that “slow and steady wins the race.”
When I first got together with my husband, I would joke that he was the tortoise and I was the hare. It just fit our personality styles and ways of working.
He is deliberate and takes his time. I, on the other hand, want everything done yesterday, am more impulsive, and quick.
For years I thought that I should be more like him. Well, more like the tortoise. Actually, for my entire working life I felt that. Until recently.
That’s when I decided I wanted to claim my inner rabbit energy. And I found myself angry at Aesop!
Because let’s face it, not all of us have tortoise energy! And that doesn’t mean we aren’t successful or highly functional workers. It simply means we work differently.
I tend to work in spurts that are fast and furious. I get a ton done during those periods, but then I want to rest. Unlike, say, my husband, who will happily plod along every day. We get the same amount done, just in different ways.
And because of my work style, I’ve always felt punished for being an efficient worker.
What I have come to understand now, is that there is room enough to embrace both ways of working. This is the nature of diversity. Some people are more project oriented, prefer to come in and work intensely, and then stop. While others love the routine of the same daily schedule.
It isn’t that one is bad and one is good.
It is merely different.
What are you?
Is your energy more of the sustained, routine driven, slow and steady variety?
Or do you prefer to be on and then off?
I have found it helpful to understand myself (without judgment) so I can choose work that most resonates with my natural energy swings. And stop thinking I need to be hard wired in a different way.
The invitation here is to embrace your inner tortoise or hare, and remember that we can each win our own race.
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Image courtesy of David Mark on Pixabay