You’ve probably heard it before… slow and steady wins the race.
In the parable, a fast and cocky hare loses a race to a slow and steady tortoise. While he had the lead early on, in his hubris, he decided to take a snooze and the turtle passed him by.
Turtles are my husband’s favorite animal, sea turtles, actually. For Father’s Day we got him a few decorative turtles for our new house. It got me thinking about the parable the tortoise and the hare. While I get that you are supposed to follow the turtle’s example, I never liked the idea of slow in “slow and steady wins the race”. When you flip it around, “fast and lazy” sure doesn’t win the race, so what do you do? You don’t want to be slow, but you don’t want to be lazy, either. And maybe your situation as a parent or working a day job while you build up your passion project doesn’t allow you to speed along either. So what do you do?
The moral of the story isn’t about the speed — it’s about consistency.
Consistency wins the race.
Consistency takes the next step.
Consistency follows through with your plan.
Consistently sharing your business.
Consistently taking action toward your goals means you are building and not just dreaming.
I am continually reminding myself of this lesson of consistency. I am great at bursts of creativity and sprints towards goals, but marathons of marketing still challenge me. To keep my goal of consistent action at the front of my mind, I created this little reminder charm bracelet with a sea turtle and good luck charm.
Words and images have meaning beyond just their initial form. To me, a tortoise has never seemed to really enjoying his steady progress as he trudges slowly along. That’s not the kind of consistency I want in my life. I don’t want to be lumbering, slowly, although consistently, towards my goal. So I chose a sea turtle instead of a tortoise. The effortless and serene way a sea turtle glides through the ocean conveys the steady, graceful and powerful style of consistency I’m interested in adding to my life.
I made my charm bracelets from items I found at my local Michael’s, but you can also get similar hook bracelet and sea turtle charms on Amazon.