Greg Voisen
Well welcome back to Inside Personal Growth. And on the line with me is Donna Dahl. And we're going to be speaking with Donna about a book that she wrote a while back but an interesting little book called Lessons I Learned from the Tortoise. Donna, Good day to you. How are you?

Donna Dahl
I'm well thank you. Thank you for inviting me.

Greg Voisen
Well, Don is joining us from porta Viar toe Mexico where she's spending three months but the rest of the time she spends her time in cold Canada where exactly in Canada are you from Donna? I'm from Calgary. Calgary, okay, hot in the summertime called in the wintertime. So she enjoys those Calgary stampedes. Now I'm going to let our listeners know a tad bit about you Donna, before we get into talking about your books and the lessons you've learned. Donnie is an award winning empowerment coach having won women of inspiration Award for Lifetime Achievement, the Queen Elizabeth the Second Diamond Jubilee medal and the 100th anniversary International Women's Day Award for outstanding services to business. Donald Donna is humbled by the numerous testimonials and recommendations posted online, online both by our clients and our peers. And you can find them on Amazon and on public social media networking sites, like LinkedIn and Alignable. Donna's a pretty well versed person, you can go to her website at Donna P doll dhl.com. That's Donna P doll. To learn more about her business, her books, how she helps people actually create and write books. But this little book is quite interesting, actually, I think probably done. Many people have known the story of the tortoise and the hare. But we always learned something from it, if you would tell our listeners a little about yourself. And what really compelled you to write this book lessons I learned from the tortoise.

Donna Dahl
Thanks for asking, alright. Aesop's fable about the tortoise and the hare is a story that appealed to me way, way back in time. I, I always found myself identifying with the tortoise. And that that might have had something to do with the fact that I stopped growing when I was 13. And others were passing me by. You know, it's interesting that when illustrators create pictures depicting the tortoise and the hare, they always have the tortoise, black down on all fours almost hitting the ground. And the hair is upright on his two hind legs all and ready for action. It's whether that's an appropriate way to think about the tortoise and the hare or not. I'm not sure. But the moral of the story in the final analysis to me said, you know, it's possible for the underdog, even. And I think that that's that that's what makes this story so memorable to me. As a coach, I'm working with individuals who are wanting to develop leadership skills, who are working in the realms of team building and wanting to develop confidence, whether it's in their team or in themselves. And so I see lessons I'm learning from a mentor, and a sort of a manual that could that could help leaders support them, not only themselves but their teams as well.

Greg Voisen
Yeah, it's really interesting. You're saying this because I just did a an interview with comedian Samuel called wealth coaching. And she actually works with coaches, you know, as it relates to your story, you know, people go, Oh, I'm going to be a coach and I'm going to end up earning six figure income right away. And it is really about the tortoise and the hare here. It takes time and patience to really develop a good coaching business and reach the levels that you would like to reach and if you're not committed and determined to do that, chances of you getting there are pretty slim to nil there are you know, I know we see these great famous coaches out there from all over who, you know, maybe they did make money quickly. But statistically, she proved to me otherwise, as we talked about it. And I think you'd agree with that. Now, you say in the book that we pattern, a lot of our pain, our behavior, around guidance that stems from our past, I agree with you, you know, it's, we get comfortable in what we know. So we don't try and kind of push for the discomfort. And I recognize that that's a challenge. How do you recommend changing patterns that are not serving us to our highest and best potential? In other words, you're a coach, you're working with people all day long? And you see these patterns that they get stuck in? And how do you get them to identify the pattern? And how do you get them to release that pattern, and become a little bit more risky?

Donna Dahl
One of the first things that, that I like to point out is that I've, I've done some work on myself. So I had to, I had to confront some of the things that were in my present life. And where did they come from? And how did they get there. So one of the things that has happened is that my closet has expanded over the years, partly because I haven't necessarily changed by size. But there was a something that was instilled in me when I was very, very young. And that was that I needed to be gentle with my clothes. There were people that were described as being hard on their heart on their clothes, and I was asked to be gentle on my clothes so that I can pass it down to younger members of my family. What? What, in order for me to get a grip on this business of my wardrobe, I needed to be able to do a wardrobe inventory analysis, how did my clothing get to stay there? And what was I going to what was I going to do about it,

Greg Voisen
so I mean, purging your closet. But awesome. But you should see my closet, I must have been trying to be gentle on mine as well, because my wife always says to me, you need to get rid of half of that stuff you have.

Donna Dahl
But until unless and until we're prepared to face, the behaviors that we have, the actions that we take, the beliefs that we operate on, nothing is ever going to change. And so sometimes it really helps to work with a coach to help identify those underlying pieces that may be having an influence on your life that you that may be no longer serving.

Greg Voisen
Well, that's a perfect example. I mean, it's actually It may sound funny to some, but, you know, look, I grew up with a little Jewish mother, who always told me to save everything. And she grew up during the Depression. So I got to be the benefactor. And I think sometimes what you have to do is on some of these things, you get their gifts, you have to say I love what my parents gave to me. And you have to accept it versus fighting it, you know. And in my case, it was it's about like saving stuff because my mom used to send me to school. So here's a perfect example. Like you, you had to be gentle with your clothes. This is another great behavior. She had me bringing home the paper bag that she put my lunch in, and I would literally have five lunches that would go to school in the same paper bag that she put my name on. Now, some people might just say that that's just absolutely ridiculous. But to this day, when I get a bag, I fold it up, and I put it away. That just shows you a pattern, that and a belief that you have they can hang on for I'm going to be 69 years old. So that's a long time to be hanging around paper bags. But you know you utilize this Aesop Fable about the tortoise and the hare and you state that speed may matter but slow and steady wins the race. And we just used an example about coaching. That's a great I think because you're a coach, you're not going to make probably six figure income in your first year. So, you know, get ready for that. I know we've all heard the quote. But how many of us have really heard the message? Can you tell the story that you did in the book about Alexander Graham Bell's patent filing, I never knew that I was just like, wow, that's a that's a great little story, because it exemplifies, you know, the speed, right? We're talking about speed. And I won't ruin it. So go ahead and tell it because I didn't know it.

Donna Dahl
Well, Alexander Graham Bell illustrates not only speed, but also commitment, commitment on a number of fronts. To begin with, Alexander was all about solving a problem. And that problem had to do with his mother, who had challenges with her hearing. So she always needed to use a horn that Alexander would speak into, in order to help her to hear what he was saying. Alexander wasn't satisfied with that solution. And so began working on something that at that time was called an acoustic telegraph. another fancy word for what we speak about today as a phone. But with an acoustic telegraph, what he wanted to do was he wanted to be able to transmit sound waves across a skinny surface like a wire, in order to be able to communicate that sound into another space when the person was visible. On the day of filing for the patent, apparently, Elisha Gray, was also working on experimenting with an acoustic telegraph. And in fact, she and others challenged Alexander in the court, subsequent to his inspiring, and that years, years of resolution, and finally, Alexander was granted the big cottoned on the telephone. And in Canada, we still have the Bell System, in in, in effect today, as a result of having been declared the fastest person to the patent office in 1876.

Greg Voisen
Yeah, it's a fascinating story. And it really does. Just bring up the whole story of the tortoise and the hare, you know, just hanging out, are you going to hang out? And that brings me to kind of my next question. The second chapter of your Burke book, you speak about the fact that it's okay to be second. We've seen people who've invented things or they waited for somebody else to do something, and then they made whatever it was better, right? In other words, it's like proving it. I remember, you know, like I can I go back to the days when we used to use palm pilots, and I'm much many of my listeners will remember that device. And we used to exchange business cards with infrared, right? Was boom, it would send it and, you know, you think about it, Palm Pilot pebble, which is the first digital watch kind of company as well. And you look back at these, and so many people wrote on the back of all these kinds of inventions. And you said it's okay to be second, you tell the great story about the first producers of automobiles. And note that Henry Ford was not first. What are the advantages near estimation of not being first other than I've just pointed out a few. You can take the technology that somebody comes out with and then you can make it better and better and better and better.

Donna Dahl
Yes, yes. I love the question. There's there are some, you know, who would never entered the race to begin with, if someone had already arrived at the finish line. But that didn't. That didn't stop and record and while Ransome Eli OLS may have had the first assembly line with respect to producing vehicles back at the beginning of the 20th century. It was Henry Ford, who was first use a conveyor belt in the manufacture of automobiles. And so he did, he is a great example of making it better. If we don't forward to the 1950s, it was actually Russia that had the first equipment, the first satellite, and the United States followed a year later with putting theirs into space. So sometimes the big first can be the motivation to others coming behind, I think that that coming second says that you didn't give up. In, I talked in the book about horse racing, where you know, where to place your show, twice is still a pretty important space to be in, because it's still in the money. So it's okay to being second. That doesn't mean it doesn't mean that your last position, in fact, as in Henry Ford's case, it helped him to become the largest producer of automobiles in the world.

Greg Voisen
Yeah, I think people can just perfect it. Sometimes they have the vision for in his case, it was mass assembly, assembly lines. I remember this from the days of technology, it's, you know, Bill Gates way back when I was going to all the shows in Las Vegas that they would do around computers. And the story is, and I'm sure it's totally true that IBM was way before Bill Gates, and IBM also created dos. And Bill Gates bought dos from IBM. And it wasn't him that actually created the foundation of I mean, when you look at initially when we were doing computers, it was all dos stuff, right? Obviously, it's progressed way beyond that at this point. But like you say, when you look at the first people, when you look at the university that first said, hey, they created the internet, they say that internet, or the government that was involved in it, I mean, you look at how it's just piggyback. And if you would speak with our listeners about celebrating their success, I think this comes down to an individual level. No matter what place they finish, you mentioned just being in the game, the race, we're talking about the tortoise and the hare here is as important as winning whether or not the tortoise won it or the hare one it the reality is they were both in the race.

Donna Dahl
They were both in the race. Sometimes it's a question of what do we value? Do we validate participation? Do we value a clause or some combination of both? To me, it's all about endorphins. So if we're getting exercise, if we're getting mentally challenged, if we're getting recognition, coming first, second, third, it's endorphins sort of send us to our happy place that that that improves our mood, it improves our, our appetite improved on our mental health. Thank you. So stepping forward, and joining the race is very good practice to have. And I would, I would say to leaders, come on, let's, let's improve the spaces where we can practice positive, positive engagement with the culture that we're attempting to develop in the workplace.

Greg Voisen
Yeah, and I think, you know, when businesses, you know, when they start up, there's all this smaller businesses that turn into be very big businesses. And then when they get to be very big, sometimes they lose some of that entrepreneur spirit. And, you know, there's the old cliche in business consulting, you know, storming, forming norming, right. And so as you climb up into those various levels, you find that there is a level of complacency and bureaucracy and a challenge, but you've got to challenge every individual within the organization to bring their creativity and innovation. That's what most businesses are looking for. And you talk about a really important thing. If my goal is aligned with the goal of the company that I work

Donna Dahl
For, that's great.

Greg Voisen
That's where you're going to get the most engagement from me. And you speak about multitasking, and how it gets in our way of making progress. And I would agree with you, I think it was actually Microsoft that did the study. And they said, how many things? Can you actually pay attention to it once? I think optimally? I know I'm going to say one, but I think it came down to two or three, was it you know, but people have so much on their plate. Speak to the listeners about the power of focus, and the distractions of multitasking? And how it takes them off of? Let's just call it their mark.

Donna Dahl
Thank you. Great, great question. A university professor of mine once asked the question of how many conversations can you live them too, at one time? I thought interesting question is his answer was, we can only focus on one conversation at a time, what happens is that we can focus on the conversation over here, by focusing our veer in that direction, by shutting off this year, and then fluctuating back and forth, will help us to focus on one or the other, but only one at a time, we can't hear two conversations at the same time. So thinking about what is the definition of a distraction. And my take on that is that a distraction is, first of all, anything that causes us not to be present in the present tense in the present moment. And the other is that a distraction acts as a beach word. So what is going on in our universe, and in 2023, is that we are being pummeled with pings on our cell phone. We're, they're finding that individuals, for instance, working in an office space, might be checking email inboxes, as many as 30 times in an hour. If you added all that time up over the course of a day or a week, that's that there are some who might consider that to be time lost, in terms of in terms of work. So the part here that bothers me about multitasking is that it is reducing our attention span, off to stay committed to a particular task or goal for any length of time. And those people who work in a multitasking environment tend to find that the end of the day, they will, they will comment will be that they've accomplished nothing. Because all they were doing all day long with being over. Yeah, and when you have

Greg Voisen
the short attention span on something and you go back and forth, it's like, you know, people wanting to get your attention, if you're middle line manager and your door is open, and you said you always had an open door policy. And I get that, I think you need to hear the people that work for you and with you. But it prevents you from getting the stuff done that you need to get done. So it's almost like I think it's better to time block and have office hours and say if we really want to talk, you can get me at this particular time. And that seems to be a challenge for a lot of people because as you said, the digital devices are also taking from their time because they're a distraction. They're normally a distraction, they're an addiction, they become highly addictive. And I guarantee you that the companies that have those wants you to be addicted to them. That's their point. You talk about a really interesting story you tell about the art of quilting, and what are known as UFOs. I always thought those were, you know, unidentified flying objects, but it's not in your book. Speak with us about finishing what we start and our unfinished projects because this actually goes right along with what we were just talking about multitasking, allowing and figuring out what the priority is. You know, I think there's a goal and then there's proximal goals that are the goals prior to those that help you do it a step at a time because in reality, this is about taking the baby steps to get The bigger step no matter how long it takes, yeah.

Donna Dahl
Partly, partly, Greg, but one of the things that influences the, the choice, whether it's finished or not. Why? Why started in the first place? Was it intended to be a gift? Was it intended to be a challenge project? was? Was it? Did it end up being too complex? Was it taking up too much time? Come up with a well first,

Greg Voisen
first tell the audience what the UFO is that you're saying? Oh,

Donna Dahl
it's an unfinished object. In other words, a quilt project. Right, started and remains unfinished. Got it? Okay. Are those people in business who advertise themselves as being persons who finished those UFOs for the quilter? Oh, the project doesn't have to remain unfinished. But anything that's unfinished, doesn't necessarily do us any good. And so um, come up with an acronym that might help those unfinished projects, whether they're quilts or whether they're tasks of another nature. Initiative, alternate, done delegate it, or donate it. Bad dentists should alter it, delegate it, or donate it.

Greg Voisen
I like that. I like that. You know, that's, I know, many of my listeners, I don't know if this show gets into Canada. But I wouldn't say I'm addicted, but I love American Pickers. And so when they go out, and they see these old barns filled with old cars, or, or chest of drawers, it doesn't matter what it is. It's just been sitting there for 2530 years. And the pickers will say, Well, I had it. It was I was definitely wanted to finish it, but I got it done. And it's not just a little bit of stuff. It's barn after barn after buying and keep thinking here. So is that stuff just distracting me? Or what? Because there's no way possible that anybody's going to finish doing half of what the stuff is that I see. It's just that it's like an addiction. I call it an addiction. So I get the UFOs. Now, we all know the tortoise won the race, through focus and physical stamina and determination. What is it that you want our listeners to know about tenacity and determination? Because that's a big one. And I'm sure when you're when you are coaching people. You know, one of the things that I'm noted for, I would say, is my tenacity and my determination. This is my 16th year of the show. And most people say, how did you get to almost 1000 podcasts? It's like, they can't even believe that I've stayed around. But, you know, I love what I do. And I think that's part of it, you've got to love it. And you then you really have to stick with it. It's not always Wine and Roses, it isn't always great. But you get through those and then you keep improving how you do it your process, then it becomes easier, you know, so speak to them about tenacity and determination.

Donna Dahl
tenacity and determination are based in commitment. You know, you when I was I had applied for acceptance into matcher studies. And at the time, I was a single parent mom. Holding down a full time paying job and wanting to improve my credentials. got accepted. And I'm approaching five years in the program when I get called into the office of the of the department head telling me that I was running out of time. Wouldn't I just rather accept a diploma instead of a master's? And call it a day? I said no, it's my intention to finish my master's and all I need is one more year. I still had some coursework to do And I still needed to write the thesis. But I was given the extension, and I completed the Master's. In fact, my thesis was 169 pages long and my family committee had been changed recently. That is commitment. That's,

Greg Voisen
that is commitment. I think it's it and true and everything that you that you go out to complete, right. And maybe, and I think this is the most important thing is, for my listeners, this would be important. The attachment to the outcome is not what we're talking about. It's the journey toward the outcome. That's the most important, it doesn't always turn out exactly like you thought. But what creates disappointment in your life, is this huge disappointment, if you've set this stretch goal or whatever in your life, and you don't get there, and then you start beating yourself up for it. And you said that earlier in this interview, it's okay to be second, right even okay to be third, the point is, you were still in the game. And I think that's an important point of this whole book, you know, of our interview. And there's a takeaway there. And I'm going to ask you about that he has a lot of great stories and examples in the book. And if you were to leave our listeners with three sound bits of advice regarding speed, tenacity, determination, commitment, what would you like to leave them with? And how could they apply it to their lives, like really, immediately as a result of listening to this podcast?

Donna Dahl
Well, thank you for the question. The I think one of the things that that is really important to reflect on strategy, and what influences strategy. We've talked about strategy being entering the game. The strategy could be based on a time element. strategy could be based on simply attempting to respond to circumstances in our environment. So what let's get in touch with what is our what is our strategy for moving forward? The second point that I'd like to make help you with bias, and that is that there are elements in the book where I address things that we value, are we are we more prepared to value speed? Are we more prepared to value tenacity? Are we more prepared to value finishing? Or are we more prepared to value getting engaged, we need to the front or bias in order that we can perhaps create a different realm of influence when it comes to diversity and inclusion. Last point I'd like to make has to do with challenge. And in the afterword, in my book I write that challengers inspire us to take time, long before we might ever become giant. Oh, I would like to challenge all those who are listening today to consider the possibility of reaching, stretching, accepting a challenge, accept my challenge to pick lessons I learned from the tortoise, my book to be your Manu, as you proceed with your leadership. That's a

Greg Voisen
that's very sound advice. For my listeners, many of them might already know or maybe they don't know. But I have a co-authored book coming out called Life on the precipice that was co-written with Beau Parfitt and Cathy Sparrow. And it's all about the expedition climbers and extreme athletes, and how they stay committed and determined to reach their goals. It's those ones like we say, I have one gentleman I interviewed he climbed Everest 17 times. So if you can imagine the determination it takes To do that that many times, it's pretty amazing. And most of the people, I would say, after having interviewed all these advanced climbers, it's tenacity, determination, and commitment. And those are three great words. Because that's the only way you're ever going to achieve those lofty goals that they had. So Donna, it's been a pleasure having you on inside personal growth. And for my listeners, again, go to Donna P doll. dhl.com. You can learn more about her there. You can learn about her services as a coach, her business book development workshops and talks. spotlights on Donna. There's a blog as well, please visit that website. And we'll put a link to Amazon to this book, which is only available in Kindle format. It's $4.99. us so it's very inexpensive, something you can download and probably read within an hour or hour and a half, something like that. Very easy book to read and a good book to have to pull some of these tidbits out of so Donna, thanks for being on the show. Thanks for sharing your wisdom and background with us and as a coach if you're looking for a good coach. Go to Donna's website contact her there's a contact on a right in the left hand corner. Donna namaste to you. Thank you so much for your time today.