Are you friends with the elephant in you?

“Zookeepers typically strap a thin metal chain to a grown elephant’s leg and then attach the other end to a small wooden peg that’s hammered into the ground. The 10-foot tall, 10,000-pound elephant could easily snap the chain, uproot the wooden peg and escape to freedom with minimal effort. But it doesn’t. In fact, the elephant never even tries. The world’s most powerful land animal, which can uproot a tree as easily as you could break a toothpick, remains defeated by a small wooden peg and a flimsy chain.
Why?
Because when the elephant was a baby, its trainers used the exact same methods to domesticate it. A thin chain was strapped around its leg and the other end of the chain was tied to a wooden peg in the ground. At the time, the chain and peg were strong enough to restrain the baby elephant. When it tried to break away, the metal chain would pull it back. Sometimes, tempted by the world it could see in the distance, the elephant would pull harder. But the chain would not budge, and soon the baby elephant realized trying to escape was not possible. So it stopped trying.

And now that the elephant is all grown up, it sees the chain and the peg and it remembers what it learned as a baby – the chain and peg are impossible to escape. Of course, this is no longer true, but it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter that the 200-pound baby is now a 10,000-pound powerhouse. The elephant’s self-limiting thoughts and beliefs prevail.

If you think about it, we are all like elephants. We all have incredible power inside us. Certainly, we have our own chains and pegs – the self-limiting thoughts and beliefs that hold us back. Sometimes it’s a childhood experience or an old failure. Sometimes it’s something we were told when we were a little younger.

The key thing to realize is this: We need to learn from the past but be ready to update what we learned based on how our circumstances have changed, as they constantly do.”[1]

In other words, we have to learn to think better about the past and present, so we can ultimately live better from here on out.

Truth be told, inner peace begins the moment you take a deep breath and choose not to allow past events to control you. You are not what happened to you. You are what you choose to become at this moment. Let go, breathe, and begin again…

[1] Getting Back to Happy: Change Your Thoughts, Change Your Reality, and Turn Your Trials into Triumphs

    Until next time, remember,

• You are not alone.

• You are not your circumstances.

• You have everything within you to live a purpose-filled life.