You have the story of the hare and tortoise. In this story, there is a contest and the hare ends up being the hare. This is because he goes every which way, thinking he will win anyway, while the tortoise is clearly moving toward his goal despite going much slower. If I remember correctly, the tortoise wins.
I see myself pretty much as such a hare. My mind is also going in all directions right now for the blogs and podcasts. For example, I don't want to talk about corona, yet I quickly notice that's what it's about.
So you see how quickly you can get into the corona mindset. You become hypnotized by everything around you because you can't escape it. This causes you to think about it. This can cause you to become resigned to it. Or it can cause you to rebel, like, "They can't have me. Such an action. So you have all kinds of reactions, but you react to that trigger.
How you respond and what you think about it is personal.
So what else can you say about it? Personally, I'm pretty much done with it,
So hence I want to talk to you about the hares and turtles.
The hare strategy
My strategy is the hare strategy. Starting very hard, running very fast and then getting exhausted before you get to the end or finish anything. In short, that's my life.
The only thing I'm going to finish is that I was born and then one day I'm going to die. That seems strong that I'm not going to finish that. That that doesn't get delayed, but that's kind of my strategy.
I can produce a lot in a few months and then I stop.
The turtle strategy
But you know who wins the race, which is the turtle. That's consistency. Just keep going. Just doing something every week or every day anyway. That every day you're working on improving yourself.
It may not go very fast or as fast as you want, but if you want to learn to play the piano, for example, it's more convenient to do a little every day. Then you will at least maintain your level and be able to improve. This is better than doing a lot in a month and then nothing after that.
I find that strategy of consistently doing something very difficult. I'm really such a hare. As a result, I did discover that hares are very good at getting a big head start.
However, I can only maintain such an edge by gathering turtles around me. I must, by all means, have people around me who are consistent and who continue to execute this.
Then I must be a bit of a turtle myself.
What helps then is to schedule things in a calendar.
For example, I can create 30 podcasts in a month, but when the month is over I'll go back to doing something else. That doesn't help, but consistency actually gets people hooked and listening to you. So if you do keep blogging or podcasting regularly.
Because of the corona changes and my surroundings, I also got to the point a little before the finish line where I thought, "I'm going to take a nap. F*c kit. And then the turtle comes and wins that race."
So I thought, "Yes everything is about corona and I can hardly think of anything else but that. Fortunately, I participate in a challenge that makes me read a book every day and then you think about something else."
Fortunately, I was able to let go of this after a few months. Because imagine if it takes a year (and it pretty much does now)? Then you have to start making something that continues to inspire people despite corona.
How do you start something you want to start?
So the moral of the story there are 2 things you can do.
First, just get back to doing the things you want to do. Regardless of the whole environment. Stop talking about it, watching it and being involved with it. As far as you can, of course, but as much as possible. Otherwise it's just polluting your brain. Letting it go frees up space for you to do the things you think are cool to do.
Maybe you were already into this by now. Did you already think this made super sense.
Second, take a moment to consider who you are in terms of the hare and the tortoise. Metaphorically speaking. Are you good at starting or are you good at being consistent? Both are useful. It's best to have some kind of combination of the two.
A hare is someone who usually goes well on challenges. You finish your website in four days, you start a challenge to post something on social media every day or eat healthy or whatever.
But to perfect this and to improve anything, you need a turtle. Maybe you are not, but then you can say you can hire someone to improve something.
So you can start like a hare. After reading this blog, you may be thinking, "Yes, I'm going to do it. I'm going to work on something. I'm going to finish something this week or I'm going to start something."
This may be something you've been thinking about for a long time. Now think for a moment what that might be. For example, to meditate for half an hour every day for seven days. You already know you're probably not going to keep that up for thirty years. You do that one first.
After that week, you start meditating for five minutes every day from that point on. Then suddenly that's super easy. Then you grab the turtle much less, but you meditate anyway.
So start fast, make meters and then maintain a slightly slower pace. You can then do that with the turtle calm and relaxed for the rest of your life.
Also listen to this podcast:
https://www.buzzsprout.com/195236/3723245-schildpad-en-de-haas?play=true
The tortoise entrepreneur or the hare entrepreneur?
It also looked at the development of leisure entrepreneurs in America and found that these types of entrepreneurs are often seen as the turtles. After all, they only have their free time to set up their business. The startup is indeed a bit slower than entrepreneurs who start business without another job, but the study shows that the turtles do indeed develop and eventually reach the same level as the hares. Thereby, the advantage for these turtles was that they had more economic and non-economic advantages at the beginning of their venture. For example, you don't have to start with debt when you go into business in your spare time. The tortoises were more likely to have a profitable business earlier and to have more consistent sales[1].
Other research has also looked at routes people can take to entrepreneurship and whether they start like a hare and then lose, or instead work steadily on their success like a tortoise. This shows that no one route is superior to the other, so being a good mix of both is indeed helpful, but that people who have worked before often go like a hare and people from academia who go into entrepreneurship are more likely to take the tortoise's path[2].
Help to get started on your goals
So there are multiple ways for you to begin your goals. This could be the goal of finally working for yourself after all, or this could be a goal in your personal life. To finally take up a certain hobby, for example.
If you're struggling with this a lot and such a challenge doesn't kickstart you into doing what you actually want to do, it can be helpful to examine and change limiting beliefs.
With this, hypnosis can help. For example, you can ask yourself why you are not doing something and then have a little discussion with yourself. If you have done this countless times, a hypnotherapist can also help you in a conversational format to find out your limiting beliefs and who knows, maybe even remove them.
Sometimes it takes a little more than that. For small changes in your life, such as wanting to eat healthier or spend half an hour every day painting or something similar, the swish technique can be a good solution. In this technique, you visualize the behavior you no longer want to do and the behavior you do want to do.
For example, you visualize that you don't want to hang out in front of the television anymore, and you visualize that you are enjoying painting by numbers (or whatever you want to do instead of watching television). To that second visualization you couple positive emotions.
Then you start to shuffle this in your mind a bit, this is where the hypnotist helps. Until your unconscious clearly chooses the behavior you want to exhibit with the positive emotion.
This can help you still get that kickstart or start your change steadily.
Want to learn more about hypnosis and how it can help you? Then come to the free online master class on hypnosis.
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[1] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0883902614000172
[2] https://academic.oup.com/icc/article-abstract/28/4/899/5526892
