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Lessons From The Tortoise and Hare That We Should Know with Donna Dahl · Inspiring Stories

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  Thank you for listening to De Pictures Media Radio. You rat you readything to
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  me? Oh well, jus well not a bad stop alone. I just
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  see sow shmashion alonge is it is, as you know, sometimes a serious
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  message can come in a humorous kind of way. Our next guest, Donadal,
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  she has a book out there that references the hair and the tortoise lessons
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  that you can learn from the tortoise, and it's kind of a humorous thing
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  because most people think, what in the world could I learn from a tortoise?
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  Well, let's consider this that Donna is a high powered coach and she
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  teaches the mindsets to those who are already executives, and she has methods of
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  teaching us different things that we need to learn in life so that we can
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  find our path, enjoy our path, and live the way we're supposed to
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  live on purpose. So why don't we bring our empowerment coach and book development
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  coach, which we're also going to speak to a little bit about how to
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  write that book as an expert after you've gone through some of our other empowerment
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  coaching. So why don't we welcome down to the show and we'll ask her
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  a little bit more about what the Tourtoise actually has to teach us. Why
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  don't we start with what how did you discover that you should be empowering people?
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  That's that's a very interesting question. I'm I'm never one to want to
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  adopt shoulds in the in the first place. But I believe that I'm attracted
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  to things that work, things that bring joy to other people, things that
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  make a difference, things that deliver change. Where change is requested, it's
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  it's more a magnetism perhaps or an invitation that that happens. And when I'm
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  invited, when I'm called, I will respond, yeah, that's a good
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  way of putty called yeah you. I remember I first first met you.
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  You talked about your book and I got to the I probably already butchered the
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  the title, but it was the lessons of that the Tortoise had for us
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  well as Up was a very smart man, having written a number of of
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  fables m hmm before the time of Christ, where he was I think creating
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  metaphors to help guide people in terms of their way of life, in terms
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  of their way of behaving, in terms of interaction and so on. And
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  he chose animals often to be the primary characters in his stories, so that
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  it maybe made it easier to swallow or easier to understand. And so in
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  the story of the Tortoise and the Hair, he wanted us to know that
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  the race does not always go to the swift, and so he gave us
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  the example. As I began to study the Tortoise and the Hair, I
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  began to realize that there were more lessons than just the one that if we
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  think about the aggravation that the tortoise may have felt as a result of the
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  constant bombardment of I'm the fastest in the forest, might have might have gotten
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  a little aggravating, perhaps to the tortoise, and that aggravation may have caused
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  him to spill out a set of words that he never really meant to say.
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  But once having said them, he was a tortoise of his word,
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  and he would show up to the race. He would give it his all,
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  he would give it his best. The hair also chose to keep his
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  word and show up to the race, except that a little ways in,
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  the hair looked back and the tortoise was barely crossing the finish line. Well
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  time for a rest. You know, maybe I didn't get enough sleep last
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  night, or maybe I don't have to exert myself quite so difficult, so
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  exuberantly, to take up so much of my energy, and I can just
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  rest here a while. Except the tortoise kept going one step after another after
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  another, plodding along with impressive consistency and deliberate action to move just one tiny
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  little bit closer to the finish line. And so, as we know,
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  the story ends, the tortoise did win, but it reminded me of other
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  races. You know. One of the lessons that I picked up on was
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  it's okay to come first. You know, sometimes we enter a race not
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  necessarily expecting to win, but we win, and then because we've never won
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  before, we don't know how to behave We don't know how to respond to
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  other people who are who are applauding us or or cheering us, or maybe
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  even booing us because we won, we were not the expected winner. So
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  there are lessons that we learn about being the unlikely winner and that it is
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  okay to be first. Yeah, one of one of the many lessons.
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  Yeah, yeah, you mentioned astop And there's like there's a spring of babels,
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  right, and some of them. They have huge lessons, even lessons
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  that we have wove been woven into our own language today. So in one
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  of my favorite lessons in The Tortoise and the Hair, of course, was
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  the tortoise showed up. He showed up completely. Yes, And you think
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  about how many times in life that we don't show up and what happened,
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  right, mm hmm for certain, So showing up is kind of important.
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  Lessons I learned from the Tortoise. Of course, I've got lots of pages
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  marked. It is on Amazon as an ebook. Another one of the lessons
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  that I chose to write about was that, uh, multitasking sucks. The
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  hair chose to multitask. He chose to have two goals within one task.
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  And what happens lots of times is that when we're trying to focus on two
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  separate things, neither one of them gets done, or neither one gets done
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  well, or our attentions are divided between the two. And people notice that's
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  a really important one, especially when we're talking to a bunch of entrepreneurs out
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  there and things dead. Oh well, I can handle it all. Instead
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  of doing one thing well and maybe delegating something too another, right, doing
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  one thing well, or or dividing things sufficiently well in order that focus may
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  be maintained on this particular task. So I'm reminded of a nursery rhyme long
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  ago that talked about Monday being washed day and Tuesday being something else there,
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  Wednesday, there's every day of the week had a task of primary focus to
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  complete, And perhaps we can do the same that Monday is for this and
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  Tuesday is for this. So even if we're delegating the meetings with those people
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  who are our affiliates or who are people who are fulfilling task management on our
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  behalf, that maybe Tuesday is the day for those meetings, and so we
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  focus on that day and not try to do a whole bunch of things at
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  once. We may feel less stressed, a little more relaxed as a result
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  of choosing different ways to manage our time. Yeah, and I can see
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  that being important with the other group of people, well, the people that
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  you're coaching to do something else with their author coaching. Also, if you're
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  going to write it right and don't do anything else versus raise a really good
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  point, Michael, Because writing is writing. It's really difficult to write and
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  talk on the phone at the same time, unless, of course, your
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  telephone conversation is part of your writing assignment. But writing writing requires a commitment
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  to spending time with oneself, spending time with our muse, or spending time
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  with the voice inside our head that helps us move the story along. Writing
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  is a very private and personal experience, and it has different different tools that
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  work for different individuals, because some will some will write by hand as they
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  were taught to do. Others will write with the keyboard as they were taught
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  to do. Varies from individual to individual. And I like to work with
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  people to help them to capitalize on the the the way in which the writing
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  flows the easiest for them. It's funny you should say that, because I
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  have with seems to move people astrained way of writing things, because I take
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  into paper and then I read the So I read what I've written into a
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  I can't think of it. His dictation is it's old term. That's not
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  that's not right anymore. Yeah, yeah, transcriber, That's what I was
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  looking for, right, So they and then I sit and edited transcription after
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  and people are like, well, why do you take all those steps?
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  And it's my process to overcome some of my to enhance my abilities and to
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  overcome some of my discipulities. Every everyone, everyone will have their own mix
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  of strategies that supports them. You have a process that that enables you to
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  visit what you're writing at least two times, if not more, or and
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  that revisit is important. There's I think there's very few times when a conscientious
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  writer accept the first draft as being the final picture, whatever that form is.
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  You think this ever happened. I'm not sure. And there are so
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  many different ways in which to self edit so that so that we become better
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  at examining what we've written with a critical eye. Yeah, yeah, exactly.
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  And that's that's basically my disability is that has dyslexia, so the critical
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  eye doesn't fully take shape for another couple of days written it. I can.
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  I can well understand You're you're operating to produce a a physical product that
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  has a visual orientation mm hm. And so it may be of uh,
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  it may be of value to consider the possibility of adding another sensory organ that
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  you have to assist you with your editing, and that being reading what you've
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  written out loud mhm. Right, but when you hear it, you would
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  know if if it's in if the words are in the right order well,
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  or if you've written it clearly enough right that that would be exactly it.
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  The reason I bring that up is because we also have some sort of process
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  that we use so that we're delivering to are our readers something about right?
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  Yes? Yes, And there there are pitfalls and snags with with whatever system
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  we use, So it's it's good to practice more than more than one because
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  the second one might catch the glitches that the first one didn't. That's an
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  important point. So me ask you this as far as because because anyone who
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  who would write a book analyzing an ASoP fable must be also an avid reader.
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  That's an interesting assumption to make. I read in spits and spurts.
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  I read sporadically. I read five books at once, and often I start
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  with the last last page of the book and then go to the first page
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  of the book. Readers, I want to know where the author is carrying
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  me and whether that has a benefit for me. So I'm a very different
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  find kind of reader. Fiction will good fiction will hold my attention from beginning
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  to end. When the character development is strong. But I also I also
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  bring my I have a master's degree in educational psychology, and I bring all
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  of that to the table in terms of when I'm doing editing, for instance,
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  dealing with character development, consistencies of personality throughout the book. And does
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  does the story have a beginning, a middle, and an end? Do
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  we can we feel what the what the character is feeling? Can we can
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  we get inside the story and allow it to transport us to a different space,
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  to a different time, maybe through the eyes or the ears of some
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  of some other person. There's I enjoy a good nonfiction. There have been
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  some some excellent, excellent books written in in the realm of nonfiction. I'm
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  mean we can go back as far as as think and grow rich and become
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  as as current as as some of the Malcolm Gladwell books. I'm I'm a
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  huge, huge fan of Malcolm Gladwell and his uh. His his books are
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  full of the shorter kind of story, but all follow. All the stories
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  within a book follow a thesis, that is, it causes causes me to
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  to to think. In the book Blink, when he writes about someone's intuition
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  about a set of sculptures that were to feel like they were real. They
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  had all the the the pieces that they needed in order to create a sense
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  for the viewer that this was authentic. But yet someone's gut said this isn't
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  real. So do we do we have a way in which we we measure
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  the authenticity the veracity of our gut? Do we allow our gut to play
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  a role in about in making evaluations, in making decisions. It's fascinating writing,
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  and that's that's always a good question to be asked, especially if if
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  it's something that that life changing. Yah, I are you pushing away because
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  you're you've got just simply not happy or it? Or is it? Is
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  it like the fear that, oh everything's going to change, and when it's
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  going to change for the better? You know? How do you how do
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  you balance that out? Specifically, how do you balance that sort of thing?
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  How do I balance it? Yes, I have I have a system
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  that um hmm. It is very interesting. In fact, one of one
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  of my clients recently I encountered recently at a networking event, said, you
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  know, I remember that conversation that we had where you to me about sticky
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  and smooth. My ears pricked up. See when when I'm working on a
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  project, it will probably either be smooth or sticky. It might depend on
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  the project, It might depend on the day of the week. So if
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  it's sticky, why is it sticky? Is it sticky because this is the
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  wrong time. Is it sticky because this is the wrong place. Is it
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  sticky because this is not my thing? It belongs to somebody else? What's
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  making it? What's making it not go smooth? And if it's smooth,
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  well, well that's going to just get me closer to the end sooner.
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  However, sometimes sometimes sticky is in place because what's needed is a challenge.
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  You know, I can do this If we think about Thomas Edison, as
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  Napoleon Hill wrote about him, that there was something like ten thousand efforts,
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  ten thousand times that he tried to make a light bulb before he finally got
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  one that worked. So sticky can invoke commitment even when commitment might be wrong.
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  But maybe it's the challenge we're supposed to have, and so we're supposed
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  to accept it and go on with it smooth. On the other hand,
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  maybe that maybe that's a gift that finally, after having had to place effort
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  in so many things smooth is a gift, and it's okay to reach the
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  end with ease, with comfort. So evaluating things as to whether they are
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  sticky or smooth, give give invitation for a pause. Let's think about this
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  before we take the next step. How do you know when that pause is
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  actually necessary? I think it's I think it's a feeling. I think it's
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  a feeling at a at a at a gut level partly, and I think
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  that with me it's also become part of part of what I naturally do.
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  Yeah. You, so you you also obviously for you to to have degrees
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  in psychology and things like that, you're used the mind a lot, but
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  you also use your intuition a lot. Also, Yes, I would have
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  to say yes. Yeah. Pretty interesting. So why don't you tell us
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  a little bit about the process of how you get people, how you empower
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  people and get them starting on their path so that they can do with their
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  supposed to be in life. That's a great question, Michael. In fact,
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  it's one that my husband and I were talking about earlier today. The
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  empowerment is something that is unique and individual to the person that I'm working with.
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  There there are no cookie cutters to empowerment. What empowers you and how
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  you feel about it is unique to you. Your beginning space of feeling empowered
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  or being empowered is unique to you and you alone. And so as a
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  result, while we can we can go to yoga classes and learn how to
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  breathe learn how to bring energy into our lives. Empowerment starts with the belief
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  that I can make change and that that change is something that will move me
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  forward to take me where I think that my path is supposed to take me,
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  to where I think that I belong to, where I can be the
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  servant leader I intend to be that I want to be that I'm meant to
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  be. So my empowerment, if I can empower myself, then I can
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  model where that might live in your body, how that might live in your
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  mind. How strongly do you believe in yourself that there is something better waiting
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  for you? And are you ready to explore that and take the first step?
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  Oh? Everything questions for a person hats Yeah, first step is always
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  the hardest one, though, isn't it. What's the old saying? It
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  depends I I read a statement recently that that said a boat that's anchored cannot
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  say it, M. Yeah, yes, I'm I'm expecting there to be
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  a trick answer inside of this. Yeah. If you're anchored in in in
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  place, you have two choices to stay in place or move. If you
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  are satisfied with staying in place, fine, we can have a conversation about
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  how that makes you feel, that, how that's benefiting you, That it
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  feels right, it's comfortable, It aligns with the person I believe I am
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  and the way that others receive me, And that's important. That's important.
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  Would I would never take on the idea that everybody needs to change, No,
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  but I think that there are many of us who are ready willing and
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  able to make at least one minor change about ourselves, whether it's a change
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  in our behavior, or whether it's a change in how we speak, or
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  whether it's a change in how we relate to one other significant person in our
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  life. Just tweaking something there? Who is it? James clear that said
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  if we change something, we change one percent of us every single day for
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  three hundred and sixty five days. That amounts to nearly a forty percent change
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  at the end of one year. Probably quite accurate. And do the math
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  of that yeah, quite accurate, right, Yes, and so to change
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  for change's sake, no change. Change should have a target, change should
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  have a bad, right. I think there should be some sort of bold
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  and place or reasons for why you want to drink. Yes, a positive
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  outcome that you will experience, fulfillment, joy, satisfaction, happiness, love,
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  friendship, some some positive benefit from the change. Sometimes people will choose
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  the change to be in the form of a diet, and sometimes people will
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  choose the change in forms of a behavior. Sometimes people will choose a change
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  in the form of learning. There are no two changes that are the same.
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  And even if you might choose the same change somebody else, you probably
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  are doing it for a different reason. Right. That all makes sense if
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  we all have our own reasons and our own purpose. Yes, And I
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  mean there are so many these days that are writing about your why. Your
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  why has to be really big and really strong and has to get you up
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  off your chair and get you going. I'm I'm not I'm not sure of
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  that. I'm not sure how big your why needs to be in order to
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  stimulate you, or motivate you or energize you to take the first step right
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  well, in order to get you to take the first step. It may
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  not necessarily have to be all that big, but in conmparison to some I've
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  known to have turned it into a life vocation, would it have to be
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  fairly baked or something like that? Commitment is an interesting thing, like you
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  know, hm, what was the saying in for a penny, in for
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  a pound? Some people have greater levels of commitment than others. Is it
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  because of their Why? I don't know, and I wouldn't dare to guess.
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  It might be yeah, I can see as a coach that I wouldn't
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  want I wouldn't want to guess somebody. I guess it for someone else.
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  But if you're the individual sitting there, then it might be an important question
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  for you to answer for yourself. Wouldn't it for me to answer for myself?
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  Yes? Yes, because my my level of commitment will say okay,
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  uh, I can commit to I can commit one hour a day to this,
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  or another level of commitment might be I'll commit every morning for five days
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  a week for the next three months to doing this. So level of commitment
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  could be in terms of time allocated. If if we've never tested our limits
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  for commitment, we might not know what the boundaries of that are. Everybody's
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  different. Yeah, yeah, that makes sense. How will we test our
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  level of me? Well, if I said, Michael, what I want
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  you to do right now is get down on the floor and do pushups,
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  and you do two, and I say, come on, Michael, just
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  one more, and you got to don't make me do another way. Come
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  on, you can do one more. And maybe you do one more,
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  and maybe you don't. But you find out, You find out where the
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  boundary is to what you could do today, which might be different from your
• 38:59
  boundary tomorrow. And tomorrow you may decide that doing those two push ups today
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  put you out of commission for two days because you haven't done push ups for
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  ten years and now you're hurting, and so push ups are off the table.
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  But another person might say, you know, I did too, If
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  I could do another two today, I wonder how many days it will take
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  me to get to three? Baby steps? Baby steps wish that we take
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  becomes important and yes, yes, because in the final analysis, we're getting
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  to know ourselves through working with a coach, through having interesting conversations that create
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  self reflection contemplation to help make choices that support you as you're going forward.
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  You really know how to make a person think if you if you read some
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  of the testimonials that are up on my website, that's what people say all
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  the time. In the last in the afterword, and in lessons I learned
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  from the Tortoise, I wrote, challengers inspire us to take giant steps long
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  before we might ever become giants. And I am always on a mission looking
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  for opportunities to be your challenger. That is quite the amazing thing to be
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  for people, you know, I think just suiting you if the two be
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  the time to we talk, you're always the awaken my brain a little bit
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  more. YEA, yeah, it's it's a lot of fun that way.
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  My pleasure, my my sense, my sincere pleasure when when I can when
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  I can help create a space that is comfortable and safe and allows you to
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  explore in regions that you have that are lying dormant but want to come to
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  the surface. That brings me joy for something to run out of time that
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  I and one last question I want to ask you, what is the biggest
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  challenge in goold for Donna? The biggest challenge for right now for me?
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  Not easy to park under one umbrella. Not easy. I have been I've
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  been challenged to write a book of fiction, and that has been that has
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  been an interesting, an interesting take on an area that I began to write
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  in when I wrote Empowering the Leader Within You, where I took a fictional
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  character who comes to Canada to take a homestead in eighteen ninety nine, and
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  I I do a matching activity through the book where I show you what Albert
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  had to contend with when he first came as a homesteader and what it takes
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  to be a successful entrepreneur in the twenty first century, still having to practice
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  the same kinds of things for personal empowerment. And so my challenge is to
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  empower myself to write this work of fiction. I also am looking for more
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  opportunities to address audiences or work with teams on the subject of empowerment and alignment
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  with commitment with common goals, so that I can be of more our service
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  than I am currently now as a servant leader. And I look forward to
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  being uh to people inviting me to be interviewed to have that position with them.
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  That's it, that's that would be a fun position to challenging fun although
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  for me challenges usually are fun. I kind of kind of make adds some
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  fun to them at times. So what are the best way to get a
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  hold of you? Uh? If you make an appointment at Helen Lee dot
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  com slash Donna Doll and I'll spell my name it's d O N N A
• 45:57
  d A h L. That will start us off on having a conversation.
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  That's calendly dot com slash Dona Doll. If not, you'll find me on
• 46:09
  LinkedIn as Donna Doll as well. Well, thank you for joining us today
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  and thank you everybody for listening. Donna is a challenging person and a lot
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  of fun. I always enjoyed talking to you. Thank you, Donna,
• 46:30
  You're very welcome. Thank you for having me. How about Adam so?
• 47:04
  I wish you from the match? So why game say this day? I
• 47:21
  reason shad u cho law shots. We can't try to wait to show past
• 48:10
  see you go to Santa start so she so I now chot whisp husband.
• 49:00
  The show has been produced by Depictions Media. Please contact us at Depictions dot
• 49:07
  media for more information.