The Wisdom of the Snail: Redefining Progress for Turbo Thinkers
This morning, returning from my walk, I encountered an unexpected teacher: an elegant snail gliding along my front porch steps. Her movement was almost imperceptible, yet when I rushed inside for my phone to capture her photo, she had somehow reached the end of the step. It wasn't until I took a video that I truly understood the persistence of her progress – a perfect metaphor for how we often fail to recognize our own forward momentum.
This gentle creature reminded me of so many of my Turbo Thinker© clients who shame themselves for not moving quickly enough, for not being "productive enough." With minds racing at warp speed, generating endless ideas and to-do lists, we feel our physical execution must match our mental velocity. But what if we're asking ourselves the wrong question? What if slow, deliberate progress is not just acceptable, but optimal for achieving our intended outcomes?
Like the snail's movement, our progress often becomes visible only when someone else reflects it back to us. As a thinking partner to my clients, I often serve as that time-lapse lens: "One month ago, you were there. Look at how far you've come." Without this external perspective, we can feel stuck, our forward movement invisible to our own critical eyes.
Watch our snail teacher closely, and you'll see her fascinating pattern of stretch and contract. To advance, she must extend beyond her shell – making herself vulnerable, yes, but also creating the possibility for forward movement. Then she contracts, bringing her protective shell forward to her new position. Stretch, contract, rest. Stretch, contract, rest.
Sound familiar? As Turbo Thinkers©, we often resist this natural rhythm. We either stay safely tucked in our shells, afraid to risk exposure, or we try to stay perpetually stretched, denying ourselves the essential phases of integration and rest. Both extremes hinder our progress.
Here's the paradox that many of us face: our turbo-charged minds generate ideas at lightning speed, often creating visions that border on magical realism – beautiful, intricate, and nearly impossible for mere mortals to execute. The gap between ideation and execution can feel like an unbridgeable chasm. But what if, like our snail friend, we focused less on speed and more on creating the right conditions for natural movement?
Consider how she chooses her path: she seeks out smooth surfaces, moves during optimal conditions (early morning or after rain), and carries only what she needs. What might this look like in our lives? Perhaps it means:
Creating an environment that supports our natural flow
Identifying and removing unnecessary obstacles
Choosing the path of least resistance rather than forcing our way through rocky terrain
Carrying only what serves our forward movement
Most crucially, like all Turbo Thinkers©, we need support to externalize and process our thoughts. We need someone to help us recognize when we've actually reached our goals – because let's be honest, we tend to move the target before we can celebrate our arrival.
Remember: it's perfectly okay to be a snail in a garden of grasshoppers. Your pace is your pace. Your progress is your progress. And sometimes, the slowest path is the one that gets us exactly where we need to be.
What would change in your life if you embraced your natural rhythm instead of fighting it? How might your relationship with progress shift if you viewed it through the lens of persistence rather than speed.