I stumbled onto this great story today. I think it contains some of the missing puzzle pieces for most people to succeed online or offline.
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Once upon a time a tortoise and a hare had an argument about who was faster. They decided to settle the argument with a race.
The hare shot ahead and ran briskly. Then seeing that he was far ahead of the tortoise, he sat under the tree and fell asleep. The tortoise plodding on overtook him and soon finished the race.
The moral - "Slow and steady wins the race. This is the version of the story that we've all grown up with."
THE STORY DOESN'T END HERE
The hare was disappointed and did some soul-searching. He realized that he had been overconfident, careless and lax.
If he had not taken things for granted, there's no way the tortoise could have beaten him. So he challenged the tortoise to another race. This time, the hare went all out and ran without stopping. He won.
The moral - " Fast and consistent will always beat the slow and steady."
THE STORY DOESN'T END HERE
The tortoise did some thinking this time. He realized that there's no way it can beat the hare the way it was currently formatted. It thought for a while, and then challenged the hare to another race, but on a slightly different route. They started off. In keeping with his self-made commitment to be consistently fast, the
hare took off and ran at top speed until he came to a broad river. The finishing line was on the other side of the river.
The hare sat there wondering what to do. In the meantime the tortoise trundled along, got into the river, swam to the opposite bank, and finished the race.
The moral - "First identify your core competency and then change the playing field to suit your core competency."
THE STORY STILL HASN'T ENDED
The hare and the tortoise, by this time, had become good friends and they did some thinking together. Both realized that the last race could have been run much better. So they decided to do the race again, but to run as a team this time.
They started off, and this time the hare carried the tortoise till the riverbank. There, the tortoise took over and swam across with the hare on his back. On the opposite bank, the hare again carried the tortoise and they reached the finishing line together. They both felt a greater sense of satisfaction than they'd felt
earlier.
The moral - "It's good to be individually brilliant and to have strong core competencies; but unless you're able to work in a team and harness each other's core competencies, you'll always perform below par because there will always be situations at which you'll do poorly and someone else does well.
Teamwork is mainly about situational leadership, letting the person with the relevant core competency for a situation take leadership.
Note that neither the hare nor the tortoise gave up after failures. The hare decided to work harder and put in more effort after his failure. The tortoise changed his strategy because he was already working as hard as he could."
In life, when faced with failure, sometimes it is appropriate to work harder and put in more effort.
Sometimes it is appropriate to change strategy and try something different.
And sometimes it is appropriate to do both.
The hare and the tortoise also learnt another vital lesson. When we stop competing against a rival and instead start competing against the situation, we perform far better.
To sum up- the story of the hare and tortoise has much to say:
Chief among them are that fast and consistent will always beat slow and steady; work to your competencies; pooling resources and working as a team will always beat individual performers; never give up when faced with failure; & finally, compete against the situation - not against a rival.
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