Do You Have The Mindset Of A Circus Elephant?
When I was growing up, I lived 2 blocks away from an ice skating arena and the arena was located directly across the field from the elementary school I attended. Every year around May, I would wait in anticipation for the best part of my year.
The Elephants are here!
You see, every year the circus would come to town to perform at the arena for a week or two. But I wasn’t interested in going to see the circus performance at all. I was excited because I knew the circus meant the arrival of my most favourite animal in the world……the elephant!
Because the arena was directly beside the school I attended, I would see the trucks arrive and see the circus employees get everything set up in the back parking lot of the arena, including the temporary outdoor enclosures for the elephants.
As soon as the elephants were in their temporary home, I would take every opportunity to stand as close as their caretaker would let me.
I was in heaven.
I wanted so much to be able to go inside the enclosure and hug them and basically stay with them 24 hours a day. I’m still thankful to the elephant caretaker for letting me stay along the fence because people (especially kids) weren’t allowed to be there. I think the caretaker could see how much I loved the elephants and that I was being very kind and calm with them.
But even at a young age, I noticed how the massive elephants would sway back and forth, gently pulling on the chain that was attached to a big metal shackle around their back leg. I would wonder why they didn’t just break the chain because they were certainly strong enough to easily break it along with the chain link fence of the enclosure and pretty much anything else that was keeping it contained.
Along the way, someone gave the answer to my question.
They told me that elephants are trained to believe they cannot break the chain. When they are very young, they are restrained by a chain and while they will try repeatedly to break free of the chain, the chain is too strong for the young elephant to break. After many unsuccessful attempts, the elephant becomes to believe it cannot break the chain and stops trying.
The end result…
A beautiful, highly intelligent creature believes it cannot break free. The ingrained belief is stronger than the physical chain.
So back to my original question…..do you have the mindset of a captive elephant?
What beliefs are ingrained in you that hold you back from being all you can be; that keep you shackled from being who you were truly meant to be?
It’s time for a MindShift!
Let go of those mindsets and beliefs that no longer serve you so you can truly live your life in alignment with self.
‘Til next time, if you liked this post please social share it . Together we can help create a global mind shift.
