The Rabbit and the Turtle

Dear loving people,

We are all plunged into a very fast-paced world today. We’re getting used to instant gratification; we press a button and we get instant light and heat; we go online and get instant banking, instant entertainment, instant access to our friends on the other side of the world; we get our food ready-made in packets or home delivery, and we’re fed stories of people’s success that glorify their results.

We see all the stories of people who won gold medals at the Olympics, who created successful businesses, who wrote best-selling books. But we skip through the boring part of the stories of what it took them to achieve their successes.

We skip through the parts of the stories that describe the daily effort it took to keep going, no matter how they felt; the personal determination they put into every step of their journey; the sacrifices they and those around them had to make to get to where they are; and the number of times they had to bounce back when things went wrong. And we just focus on their success.

The result of this focus can be that we start to desire instant success, fame, 5 minutes in the spotlight, we put these people on a pedestal and see them as having achieved something that we could never do, or we start new things expecting rapid success and give up when we don’t get the same results as they did straight away.

Sustainable success doesn’t come easily, quickly or cheaply, but we can all achieve it. We just need to take the real lessons from those who have achieved it and apply them to our lives. Look at the day-to-day struggles those people went through to gain their success, and discover how they overcame them. I have learned that Consistent, effective effort leads to success.

A fan watched his star player perform extraordinarily in the pitch during a football match and then went up to him at the end of the match and said to him, “I wish I could play like you, your passes are computerized you know.”

The ever smiling star replied, “Don’t be like me, rather get to work. Let me tell you what it takes to be like me; it means getting up early every morning and jogging around while others have a nice time in bed. Then you have to practice 200 passes every morning and evening until your legs hurt, until you develop bleeding blisters then you runoff, wash off the blood and get back to the field to continue. That’s what it takes to be like me.” The bemused fan left completely speechless; he had never heard anything like that before.

One thing you should know is that some of the times:

1. It’s not activity on its own that brings success. You can be very active and always ‘doing stuff’, but if you aren’t doing it properly, with the right intention and moderately, it won’t get you anywhere near success.
2. Any activity that cannot take you towards your goal is a complete waste of your time and effort.
3. You need to learn how to do things properly. You need to gain the necessary skills and knowledge and do your activities to the best of your ability.
4. You need to do something towards your goal on a regular and consistent manner, and even if you come across road blocks and tests, you need to pick yourself up afterwards and continue on your journey.

One day a rabbit was boasting about how fast he could run. He was laughing at the turtle for being so slow. Much to the rabbit's surprise, the turtle challenged him to a race. The rabbit thought this was a good joke and accepted the challenge. The fox was to be the umpire of the race. As the race began, the rabbit raced way ahead of the turtle, just like everyone thought. The rabbit got to the halfway point and could not see the turtle anywhere. He was hot and tired and decided to stop and take a short nap. “Even if the turtle passed me, I will still be able to race to the finish line ahead of him.” he thought.  All this time the turtle kept walking step by step by step. He never quit no matter how hot or tired he got. He just kept going. However, the rabbit slept longer than he had thought and woke up. He could not see the turtle anywhere! He went at full-speed to the finish line but found the turtle there waiting for him.

Sitting around, thinking you can leave things to the last minute and then put on a superhuman squirt is not the way to achieve sustainable success. You’re taking a risk that you will have the time to do it, that nothing will crop up at the last minute and that you’ll be able to do a rush job without much thought and that it’ll be accepted. True, you may just make the deadline, but will it really be your best job? Will you really feel satisfied with the quality of what you did?

The way to long term success is to be like the turtle: “Slow and steady wins the race”. It wasn’t the fact that he moved slowly that caused him to win the race; it was the fact that he set his mind to stay in the race to the end and then he steadily and constantly moved towards his goal and never gave up.

Jim Rohn says “Success is steady progress toward one's personal goals”