Should You Take a Nap?

The Hare and the Tortoise is a fable attributed to Aesop. To refresh your memory:
The story’s about a hare who ridicules a slow-moving tortoise and is challenged by him to a race. The hare soon leaves the tortoise behind and, confident of winning, decides to take a nap midway through the course. When he awakes, however, he finds that his competitor, crawling slowly but steadily, has arrived before him.

There are many lessons one might take from this story.
Here’s one: Storytelling is the most powerful way to put ideas into the world.

Here’s one more: Great stories don’t tell—they show.
Your audience should see a picture, feel the conflict, and become more involved with the story.
How much time did it take you to see the Hare and the Tortoise? Exactly.
To elevate, illustrate.
Whether you are selling yourself; an idea; or a new business proposal; to elevate, illustrate.

Here’s one more (I’m almost done—I promise): Aesop was a remarkable storyteller.
Why? I’ll let Apollonius of Tyana, a 1st century CE philosopher, said explain it:

“… like those who dine well off the plainest dishes, he made use of humble incidents to teach great truths, and after serving up a story he adds to it the advice to do a thing or not to do it. Then, too, he was really more attached to truth than the poets are; for the latter do violence to their own stories in order to make them probable; but he by announcing a story which everyone knows not to be true, told the truth by the very fact that he did not claim to be relating real events.”

Let’s wrap it up:
The hare didn’t lose because he was fast.
He lost because he took a nap in the middle of a race.
The tortoise didn’t win because he was slow.
He won because he didn’t slack off.  (“…he never, ever stopped until he came to the finish line.”)

My 2¢:
What are the top three items on your do-better-list?
Not sure? When was the last time you reviewed it?
If you don’t do it now, when are you going to do it?
Go.

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