Elephant Change In View

There’s an old cliche story about elephants. It goes something like this. When circus elephants are young, their owners keep them in place simply by putting a stake in the ground and tying a small rope around the stake, and around their leg. The young elephant will tug a pull at that rope, but after a while they finally realize they do not possess the strength to pull that stake, and they stop. As they get older, they get stronger, yet the same small restraint is used keep them in place. If they tried, they could easily pull that stake out of the ground, but they don’t, because they’re used to it.

Humans are kind of the same way, except the stake in the ground is something different for all of us. The stake in the ground could be fear of failure, risk of rejection, or the risk of being isolated.

Whats so scary about showing your face? What’s so scary about attaching your name to something and saying I’m working through it? Isn’t life just a big process anyway? What’s so scary about committing to something, trying, and then failing?

It just takes a small change in the way you view yourself, to get others to start seeing you the same way. Just because you were one thing yesterday, doesn’t mean that you can’t become something new today. And the ones who don’t see you that way, and don’t agree, don’t matter anyway.