Is it possible? Do I have the potential?

When I was a boy the circus came to our small town in Southwest Indiana, and throngs of people gathered to watch the raising of the tent.? My brother and I were fascinated by the incredible power of the elephants as they were used to raise the massive tent beams and stretch the tent canvas into form.

That night, we attended the circus production under the big top.? My brother and I immediately noticed the elephants standing quietly while tied to small wooden stakes in the ground.? “Dad, why don’t the elephants pull the stakes out of the ground and run away?” my brother asked.? My father, a little surprised himself, asked one of the elephant handlers.

The elephant handler explained that while young and much less powerful, an elephant is tied by a heavy chain to an immovable steel stake.? The young elephant tires day after day to escape the chain, but to no avail.? The animal discovers that, no matter how hard he pulls, the chain will not break and the stake remains secure.? At this point, the young elephant no longer attempts to escape and gives up.? As a grown elephant, he continues to believe that he cannot move as long as there is a stake in the ground beside him, no matter how small or insecurely fastened.

People can be “trained,” or as psychologists put it, “conditioned” to behave like these elephants.? They are restricted by their thoughts which negatively impact their actions and results.? They are unknowingly trapped by their self-imposed limitations.? The following story illustrates this point.

Humans are amazing creatures with incredible potential, but too often this potential goes unrealized.? For centuries, a commonly held belief was that it was impossible for a human being to run a mile in under four minutes.? The belief was so strong and prevalent that it came to be known as the four-minute barrier.? Sports commentators said that it was inconceivable for an athlete to run a mile in under four minutes.? The top athletes of the period understood that this was beyond human potential.? Even physiologists believed running a sub-four-minute mile was well beyond the genetic limits of the human body and mind.? It seems just about everyone accepted that a four-minute mile would be a barrier that no human would ever be capable of breaking – everyone, that is, except Roger Bannister.

On May 6, 1954, Bannister became the first human to do the impossible – run a mile in under four minutes.? That race is still referred to as the “Miracle Mile.”? But, the most important part of this story is often left out.? Although it was widely believed to be impossible for a human to run a sub-four-mile, and although this barrier stood unchallenged for so long, Roger Bannister finally broke the “barrier,” and in doing so, he unleashed human potential.? By doing the impossible, he made everyone else realize that, if it could be done once, it could be done again.? In fact, after breaking a barrier that stood for so long, Bannister’s record only stood for 46 days before being broken again, then again, and again by others.? Now hundreds of runners consistently break the four-minute “barrier,” including several high school students every year.? Once the athletes were liberated from this self-imposed limitation, the power of human potential was unleashed.

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Never Underestimate your potential

We all have vast resources of potential just waiting for us to tap into.? The problem is that we often don’t really believe the potential is there.? The following story illustrates this point.

One night, a man in a bar had too much to drink.? Instead of risking the drive home while intoxicated, he decided to walk.? On his way home, it started storming, so the man decided to take a short-cut home through a graveyard to get out of the weather.? Unfortunately, because the night was dark and rainy, the man did not see an empty, freshly dug grave, and he fell in.? He tried and tired to climb out of the hole but because the rain had made the sides of the hole so muddy and slippery, and because of the man’s intoxicated state, he could not escape the grave.? Exhausted and drunk, he curled up into a ball in the corner of the dark hole and fell asleep.

It just so happened that another man with the same plight was taking a short cut through the same graveyard.? He too failed to see the grave and fell in.? After trying with every last bit of his energy, he too finally conceded that there was no way he was getting out of the grave that night.? He simply could not do it.?? During the commotion, the first man woke up.? Hidden from sight in the dark corner of the hole, in a deep, raspy voice, he said, “You will never get out of here.”? Hearing the gravelly voice from the dark corner of what the second man thought was an empty grave, the second man leaped out of the hole in one swift motion and ran all the way without slowing down.

The point of the story is that although the second man truly believed he could not get out of the grave, he unknowingly possessed the potential to do so.? Too often, we are just like this man.? We greatly underestimate our own potential.

What artificial barriers and self-imposed limitations are holding you back from reaching your full potential?

If you enjoyed this article, please comment below and share it with friends and colleagues. Also, you may enjoy another article I wrote entitled The Power of Persistence.

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