The Tortoise and the Hare: A lesson in reaching your potential

We all know the story of the tortoise and the hare, right?  If not, there are a few versions I found here and here.

This story teaches a great many lessons and can be applied to many facets of our life.  The lesson I would like to get from this story is on reaching your potential.  You might be wondering how this can apply to reaching your potential and if it even possible to reach your potential or to even know what your potential is.  I can tell you that I believe it is possible but if you are looking for some quick method to find or reaching your potential, you are not going to find it.  That is where the story of the tortoise and the hare come in.

Humility
As you recall in the fable, the hare had a very large ego and believed he was better than everyone else.  That was where he failed to reach his potential.  In order to know and reach your potential, you must be humble.  If you 'boast in your own strength' and believe that everything you are and can become is only because of you, you will fail to reach your potential.  Only God knows your potential.  Only God knows what you can become. You must rely upon our Heavenly Father to tell you where you should go, what you should do, and how you are to get there.

Pride
The opposite of humility is pride.  Pride has been the downfall of many individuals and nations, just like the hare.  Pride is 'boasting in your own strength' just as I talked about above.  You forget God and others and become selfish.  Instead of being nice and considerate of others, you start putting other down and telling everyone you are better than they are.  The hare knew he was a fastest and I'm sure everyone else knew it too but he continued to belittle others for their slowness, especially tortoise.  You can still be confident in your abilities and not have pride.  When pride gets in the way is when you become over-confident.  That was the hare's problem.  He was so over-confident he didn't even try.  He slept, ate lunch, and slept again thinking there would always be enough time to beat tortoise because he was so slow.  Pride will slow or even stop your progression to reaching your potential

Perseverance
Tortoise had perseverance.  The dictionary defines perseverance as: "steadfastness in doing something despite difficulty or delay in achieving success." (Google Search; define:perseverance) Tortoise could have easily convinced himself that there was no way he was going to beat hare in a race because he was just too fast and therefore forfeited the race.  He pushed on, probably hoping and praying that he could somehow beat the odds.  When it comes to your potential, you just need to push on... one week, one day, and sometimes just one hour at a time, letting the Spirit of God guide you in the direction you should go.  Reaching your potential could very well be a life long journey and possibly even longer.

Patience
The last characteristic or trait that I'm going to list that we should have to help us find and reach our potential is patience.  I'm sure there are others and you can share them with me if you would like.  If you were there watching the race, would you think tortoise or hare had more patience?  I would say the answer would be tortoise.  He was slow and steady.  He didn't care was anyone else said.  He just continued on with the race and did was he needed to.  Sometimes things don't go the way you want them to.  Trials come that can hinder or slow you down when trying to reach your potential.  Just have patience.  It is easy for me to say but it is nonetheless true.  "And not only so, but we glory in tribulations also: knowing that tribulation worketh patience." (Romans 5:3, emphasis added)

Your potential is your and yours alone.  No one else can find or achieve it for you.  Rely on God through humility, perseverance and patience without pride and you will be able to eventually reach your potential and win the race just like tortoise did.

The Path Less Traveled

Imagine you are walking down a path. After a while you come to a fork in the road where you now have two choices, the path on the left or the path on the right. Which one do you take? As far as you can tell it looks as though each path goes to the same destination, whatever that is. There really doesn’t seem to be much of a difference in the direction of the two paths and if there is a difference in direction, it is such an insignificant difference that it is almost imperceptible. Again, you ask yourself the question, which path do I take? As you look closer, you notice that one path is well travelled while the other is overgrown with trees, bushes, weeds and other greenery. It is much lusher and green then the other path which seems to be mostly dirt. One might enjoy the lush, green path if they didn’t mind some work to get through the brush. You could tell that the path on the right, the lush, green path, had not been travelled on for a long time and not very often. The dirt path or the path on the left had been used much more often to the point that it seemed the more common path for the frequent traveler of these paths. You wonder why that is. What makes the path on the left more desirable then the path on the right? Is it the destination? Is it because it appears easier and therefore a cause for less worry and concern for what one might find further down the path?

As you read this, you might be thinking about the meaning behind this story. This is the story of America. The founding fathers of this nation were this first make this choice of which path to take. The first to have to make this decision. The difference between us and them is they had to create a completely new path for us to follow. The lush and green path that is talked about didn’t exist. The thing they understood is that they didn’t want to go down the existing dirt path that was easier and didn’t require any work. They knew what the destination was going to be down the dirt path. The destination would be just like or worse than what they just left. That is why they declared their independence from England. They knew there would be no hope or promise for a better life for generations to come, only misery, suffering and enslavement to the elitists in power back in England. The great Founding Fathers of this nation forged a new path for us, hoping that we would follow in their footsteps. For the most part, we have. There have been times in the history of this nation that we have found ourselves, for one reason or another, on the wrong path. As we mentioned, these paths mostly follow the same general direction so you could, if you wanted to, jump back and forth between the two paths. If, for instance, you got tired for forging through the path on the right and all the hard work it entailed, you could jump over to the path on the left and just walk for a while without the least bit of resistance. The thing we don’t see is what lies ahead. If we were to be able to fly overhead and see both paths through to their destination you would see that these paths eventually separate enough that there is no way to go back. You might also see a deep gorge appear between the two paths which would make it impossible to go back to the path on the right without going backwards far enough that you could see the both paths again. But why make that decision? Why not stay on the path that our Founding Fathers forged for us and gave their lives, their fortunes and their sacred honor for.

We need to make a decision. Our country is headed down the wrong path. We have come far enough down the wrong path that we might have to go back before we can go forward again. It will not be easy. We may very well have to put our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor again to get this nation back on the path the Founding Fathers laid out for us. Are we willing to do that? Are we willing to take that chance? It has been said that there has been more inventions created, more opportunities realized, and more dreams reached in the last 236 years then is the previous 5,000 years. It is all because of what the Founding Fathers laid out for us in laying the foundation for the greatest nation to ever be setup.

Make a choice… the path on the left where the destination is captivity and servitude or the path on the right where the destination is liberty and freedom. What do you choose?

I choose liberty and freedom, no matter what the cost.

Welcome

Lately I have been reading a lot about finding your dream job.  Many people might think that is an impossible dream but I do not.  Through my belief in God and through all my reading I belief there is something each of is called to do on this earth.  We each have talents, some have many, some have a few and some may only have one talent.  The important thing is what we do with that talent.  We cannot hide it or we will be responsible to God for what we do.  To read the scriptural account of this, read Matthew 25:14-30.

From that scripture, I always assumed that it was our responsibility to grow ALL of our talents.  This would include things that we were good at and enjoyed doing but really didn't love doing.  I don't belief that is the case anymore.  There is only so much time in the day and only so much we can accomplish.  We need to make sure we are filling that time with things we love.  If we love what we do, our time on earth will be so much more enjoyable.

This blog is hopefully the start of my dream job.  I have been working with computers for so long I think I forgot there were other things out there that enjoyed doing even more than working on computers.  I love working with people.  I love teaching people and helping them become better.  I love helping people realize and reach their potential.  This is what this blog will be about.  I want to help people, through the lens of personal responsibility and self reliance, realize they can accomplish so much more in their life and have a more fulfilling life by doing a few simple things.  

I may have hundreds of people read this and comment on this blog or I may have one, myself.  My prayer is that I will touch someone's life, help them to reach their potential, and then go and do something amazing!

Enjoy!