The Elephant and the Chain – What’s Holding You Back?

When an elephant is young, if a trainer puts a chain around its leg and restrains it from moving far, the young elephant will initially try to escape.

After trying for a while, the animal realises that escaping is futile and gives in to the restraint, enabling the trainer to control the elephant for the rest of its life. From then on, all that is required is a chain around its leg and a wooden peg in the ground that you or I could pull out, but the elephant doesn’t.

Why?

Because it doesn’t think that it can.

Whilst that is very sad and inhumane, even sadder is that way that adult humans become restricted by the chains that they have around their legs.

Here are a few that I can think of that hold us back from ever reaching our full potential:

• Continuous put-downs from one or both of your parents.
• Embarrassing moments that you had in your teenage years.
• A lack of confidence in your ability.
• Fear of failure (or success).
• Fear of the unknown, making the chain a bizarre security blanket.
• Fear of standing out from the crowd.
• Significant emotional abuse from a person of influence in your life.
• Failed attempts that you haven’t yet learned from.

Whilst all the above reasons are quite sad, there is good news.

You don’t have to live like this and you are only limited by your mindset.

Today, resolve yourself to identify the chains that hold you back, pull them out of the ground and start living the life you were meant to live.