9 Life Lessons From The Turtle And The Rabbit (Or The Tortoise And The Hare)

The Turtle And The Rabbit (or Tortoise and the Hare, as it is called in some parts of the world) is one of Aesop’s best known fables. And everyone gets the point of it, but there is more than one life lesson lurking in this little tale.

1 You can win the prize in small steps. Will Smith tells a story about a lesson his dad taught him. He got him to build a wall, and it took Smith and his pal weeks. But he learned that a finished article is built of smaller component, and relies for stability on the correct placement of the preceding steps. The turtle needed to know that all its steps were in the correct direction.
2 Success needs an objective: define your finish line. How will you know you’ve been successful otherwise? Define what success means for you. What does it look like, sound like, feel like, smell like? Even taste like, if your objective is to make the best chocolate ice cream in the world? It should be something tangible
3 You have to keep slogging on, even if it gets boring. Any wall is built one brick after the other. Similarly, the turtle knew it had to keep putting one foot in front to the other.
4 Success requires effort. The effort made the rabbit tired. So tired, it took a nap. It was presumably effort for the turtle, too, but a little thing like putting in the necessary effort didn’t stop it.
5 Don’t be influenced by others. I wonder how many well-meaning people would have tried to dissuade a human turtle equivalent? The turtle just got on with the job. As George Bernard Shaw said, the people saying the job is impossible to do should get out of the way of the people actually doing it.
6 Don’t compare yourself with other seemingly more successful people. Most people would compare themselves with their Rabbit counterparts and decide there’s no point in competing. But history is full of David and Goliath stories.
7 Equally, believe in yourself. Even if your inner voice is trying to fill you with doubt, one mantra worth repeating over and over is that if other people have achieved it, so can you.
8 It’s better to do a proper job with attention to detail than a sloppy, incomplete job fast.
9 Finish what you start. The rabbit was a double loser. It not only got complacent and lost first place, it didn’t even finish the race. All it had to do was hop over the finish line, but it didn’t bother. It probably had a life filled with started but abandoned projects.

So the biggest take home, as far as I’m concerned, is not about complacency, or burning yourself out, or pride going before a fall, or not underestimating the competition. No, the main point is that perseverance will always yield results. As Ghandi said, it is hard to defeat someone who refuses to give up.