The Wisdom of Tortoises—And How It Can Change Your Life

Have you ever felt like life is a treadmill that never stops?

You wake up already behind. The day moves fast, and you move faster. One task leads to the next, and before you know it—it’s evening. You’ve answered the emails, crossed off the list, pushed through the exhaustion. And still, somehow, it doesn’t feel like enough.

There’s a name for this phenomenon. I call it: There’s Always Something.

There’s always something urgent. Something important. Something to tend to. In therapy sessions, I hear this theme often. The constant chase. The guilt in pausing. The worry that slowing down means falling behind.

I’ve kept pace with this phenomenon myself—running on the invisible treadmill to keep up with the Something’s. Like so many of the teens I see today, I chased straight A’s. As a scientist at the NIH, I poured myself into meeting critical project deadlines that others relied on. And during my hospital training, the urgency only deepened—we moved quickly to respond to critical patient needs, often with little time to catch our breath. 

For so much of our lives, we live in fast-forward. In the culture around us, time is often measured in productivity—how much you get done, how far ahead you are. There’s a quiet pressure to rush, to prove, to keep moving. And so we run, believing that one day, if we do enough, we’ll finally feel at ease.

But here’s the truth I often share with my clients: this pressure to rush isn’t a fact of life. It’s a belief. A story we’ve absorbed from the world around us.

In other parts of the world, time moves differently. In Italy, for example, life flows with rhythm, not deadlines. An afternoon espresso becomes a ritual. A family lunch stretches into the late afternoon. Conversations unfold without the clock dictating their pace. There’s room for presence.

In Chinese culture, longevity is a blessing often spoken aloud. On birthdays, we eat long, uncut noodles to symbolize a long life. But longevity is more than just time—it’s about quality. Balance. Harmony. The steeping of tea. The unhurried grace of tai chi. These aren’t indulgences. They’re rituals of regulation. Practices of mindfulness and nervous system care—what we now understand in psychology as vital for well-being.

Time isn’t something to conquer. It’s something to inhabit.

And that brings me to a simple story we all know: The Tortoise and the Hare.

As children, we heard it as a fable about not underestimating the slow. But lately, in both my personal life and clinical work, it’s come to mean something deeper.

More and more, I find myself wanting to live like the tortoise.
Not because I’ve lost ambition, but because I’ve found something better: intention. A quiet kind of wisdom. A trust in the pace that honors the life I want to live.

Choosing slowness in a fast world can feel radical. Even threatening. We’ve been conditioned to equate speed with worth. But the tortoise teaches us something profound: that alignment—not urgency—leads to lasting change. And in many therapeutic models, from DBT to ACT, this is echoed. Healing doesn’t come from pushing through. It comes from tuning in.

The tortoise doesn’t delay. It simply doesn’t hurry.

Think of a tree. It never rushes to bloom. It responds to the seasons, the light, the rain. And somehow, it becomes exactly what it’s meant to. No leaf opens before it’s ready.

When we try to bloom too early—say yes too often, take on too much, pursue goals we’re not rooted in—we burn out. We lose our way.

But the tortoise reminds us: healing is not a race. Growth is not a sprint. It’s a practice of attunement.

So what if this month, we took a radical stance?

What if we chose to be tortoises—together?

Not out of apathy, but because we care deeply—about our wellness, our values, our nervous systems. Because we’re listening more carefully to something DBT calls Wise Mind—the space where logic and emotion meet. It’s the inner voice that already knows:

You can rest now.
You can move slowly.
You don’t have to prove your worth today.

Try this:

• Five quiet minutes in the morning, before the world wakes up.

• Five minutes in nature, no phone—just you and the wind.

• Respond, don’t react. Let stillness lead.

• Trust that doing less doesn’t mean being less.

Let the tea steep longer. Let the email wait.
Watch the sun set. Breathe deeply.
The treadmill of life may keep running.
Step off and let it.
Be the tortoise. Inhabit yourself. Take your time.
Rest.