12 ways to nurture your inner tortoise

12 ways to nurture your inner tortoise, improve your self-care and foster longevity.

The hare and the tortoise

Do you remember the story about the hare and the tortoise. The hare, wwas always in a hurry, bounding from one piece of turf to another, sees every situation as a problem to be confronted (or avoided) in getting from A to B. This mental attitude is exhausting because they’re always living in the future.

The leisurely tortoise on the other hand takes each moment as it comes, without being overly-concerned about where it’s leading. That’s why they can live to be 150. It pays to cultivate your inner tortoise. So how do we do that?

Tortoise mind

The first thing we need to do is think like a tortoise and not like a hare.

The mind works at three different processing speeds according to Guy Claxton, an Oxford Psychologist and author of Hare Brain, Tortoise Mind. The first two you’ll recognise. The third you may not have considered before unless you are a poet or an artist – or a tortoise.

Speed 1 – the instant reaction

This quick-witted response is perfect in an emergency where your gut instincts work faster than the speed of thought; in fight or flight you know exactly what to do without having to think about it. Both the tortoise and the hare will have a touch of that – we do too.

Speed 2 – deliberate thought

Deliberate thought process information in a fast and reasoned way to answer a problem that is clearly defined, using data stock-piled away in your brain . Our education system is predicated on this type of intelligence. It’s the Hare-brain at work, bounding from one piece of turf to the next but entirely unsuited to addressing situations that are complex, unclear and murky, requiring more time to fathom them out.

Speed 3 – poetic inspiration

This calls for the Tortoise-mind. This is slower, less purposeful and more playful, using the right-brain as oppose to the left-brain. By ruminating, pondering, contemplating, it potters around a problem rather than earnestly fixing it and can make the difference between a clever or a wise solution.

Moving at a Tortoise pace, affords you the time to spot the patterns, meanings and associations that occur, which are difficult to articulate. Thought-processing can drift into what Claxton calls the ‘under-mind’, giving access to the collective unconscious and super conscious intelligence for the inspiration you seek.

The ‘undermind’ is exactly the head space you need to create a bigger life-scape and personal worldview – and why I prepare people to make the Intuitive Vision Board by getting them into this headspace. At the peak of my creative workshop, the room is full of tortoises.

Age of Aquarius

The last few decades have seen the rapid ascendancy and dependency on deliberate, logical, left-brain thinkers – the bright shining stars of the digital age. But with the age of synthesis approaching fast – the age of humanitarian Aquarius – represented by the monumental conjunction of the two largest planets in the solar system on 21st December 2020 for the first time in 400 years – we could see a sea-change in our outlook and value system, already evident by the impact of the pandemic.

The future looks rosy for Tortoise-mind – the nonlinear, intuitive, visionaries who are adept at recognising patterns and creating meaning from non-verbal cues. Now is a good time to start grooming your Inner Tortoise as more people will want to be artists, inventors, designers, storytellers, caregivers, counsellors, coaches and care workers.

With less disposable income available, more people might choose the pursuit of meaning and purpose over material advancement, while taking their happiness, spirituality and sustainability very seriously.