Mindset Of An Elephant
A man went to the zoo and as he was walking through the zoo he suddenly walked past some elephants and stopped in confusion. He turned back to where the elephants were tied up and looked once again at the thin rope that was tied to their front leg. The man was confused because he knew that the elephants could easily break the thin rope and wondered why they were not housed in a cage or even had chains to secure them in place.
At that moment a member of the zoo staff walked past and the man stopped them and asked why the elephants had not broken the rope. “That’s an interesting question” said the park attendant, “You see, when the elephants are babies and obviously much smaller we would tied them using the same size rope, which at that age would hold them in place. Due to this, as the elephants grow up and become much bigger it has been ingrained in them that they are not able to break the rope. It’s conditioning…we condition them to believe that they can never break free of the rope and this conditioning lasts throughout their life’s.”
The man stood in amazement at such a simple explanation and what a huge effect this had on these huge animals. He knew that they could, at any time break free of the rope but the elephants believed that they could never be free.
How many of us think like these trained elephants by believing that we cannot do something just because we have never done it before or tried once and failed?
“Failure is the opportunity to begin again more intelligently.” Henry Ford
Jon
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Perhaps because they don’t have opposable thumbs or maybe because they are lacking the power of language? That allegory was wrong for so many reasons.