Hare-Brained or Tortoise Minded?

Matt Caulfield — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 15:46:59 +0000

Coming from a Personal Development background (although I have come to hate that phrase, but I don’t think is the remit of this post!) the thing that fascinated me about the Slow Movement (and because of my experience and interest, the first thing that I thought about when I discovered the Slow philosophy) was the psychological side of it: the thoughts, actions, behaviours, processes and beliefs that make us a fast or slow person.

That is why I define “Slow” as a philosophy that leads to a mindset, that creates a lifestyle. I see it in that order and focus on the mindset. To quote Michael Jackson “If you want to make the world a better place, take a look at yourself then make a change. Yeah, Na, na, na, na, na, na oh ho…” And all that.

It is something I have been fiddling with for some time and it is still in it’s embryonic stages, so I thought in this post I would list what I see as the difference between the Slow “Tortoise Minded” person and the Fast “Hare-Brained” person and see what your thoughts are, I will carry on with this as I get it all sorted out in my head.

Hare Brained

Busy

Hurried and flustered

Scattered

Distracted

Impatient

Controlling

Serious

Aggressive

Analytical

Stressed

Superficial

Active

Quantity THEN Quality

Selfish/ self centred

Tortoise Minded

Productive

Unhurried and unflustered

Centred

Mindful

Patient

Co-operative

Fun and Humour

Calm

Intuitive

Relaxed

Depth and resonance

Receptive

Quality THEN quantity

Making real meaning connections with people

What do you think?

I will explore more about this as my thoughts develop. But the idea is to map the “tortoise mind” of a slower person or idler, so that we can model and mimic that to help everyone slow down!

Tortoise Knows Best» personal development

Hare-Brained or Tortoise Minded?