Can you Outswim a Sea Turtle?
The Why Café adventure continues as John asks Casey questions about how to start living one’s life purpose. Casey shares a story about scuba diving with a giant sea turtle. She decided to float at the surface of the water and watch the turtle as it moved along. To her surprise even though she was wearing flippers and did not have a life vest she could not keep up to it.
Curious, the next day she went to the same spot and spotted another turtle. The same thing happened, she tried to follow it but could not keep up. This time she observed that the turtle simply stayed put while swimming against the tide and then made a few quick movements in order to ride the wave and move quickly ahead.
Meanwhile, Casey was using all her energy and strength to try to keep a steady pace and not fall behind the turtle, regardless of the waves.
That was the end of Casey's story. John had expected the big lesson to be obvious so Casey challenged him to reflect on it and here is what he said; most of us spend a lot of time doing things that bombard us (e-mails, surfing online, watching TV, shopping, outings, reading the newspaper etc.) and that take up a lot of our time and energy. Then when it is time to pursue our passions we often don’t have the energy or focus to really move forward.
Casey was impressed with John's interpretation and he then proceeded to calculate the number of years he would dedicate to answering e-mails if he spent just 20 minutes a day. It was more than one solid year!
So I invite you over the holiday period to think about ways you may be swimming against the tide and using up energy on non-purposeful activities. I have been busy unsubscribing to lots of things lately and bit by bit I hope to spend less time on reading e-mails and more time on writing about subjects that are close to my heart!
Blessings,
Jackie
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