Are you being held back by old, outdated beliefs that no longer serve you?

My young girl was amazed at how gentle elephants were only being held by a small rope tied to their front leg, with no chains or cages in sight. She then saw a trainer nearby and asked why the elephants made no attempt to get away, even though they could have easily broken free from the rope at any time.

The trainer told her that the elephants were trained from a young age to believe that they could not break free from the rope, no matter how hard they tried. Even though the elephants grew up and became much stronger, they still believed they could not break free, so they didn’t even try.

“Well,” he said, “when they are very young and much smaller, we use the same size of rope to tie them and, at that age, it’s enough to hold them. They are conditioned to believe they cannot break away as they grow up. They believe the rope can still hold them, so they never try to break free.” She was amazed. These animals could at any time break free from their bonds but because they believed they couldn’t, they were stuck right where they were.

The old story about a baby elephant and a fence post is a perfect example of how our beliefs can hold us back in life.

This story reminds us of how many of us go through life hanging onto a belief that we cannot do something simply because we failed at it once before. We must remember that we can break through our barriers if we set our minds to them and have the courage to try again.

Like the elephants, how many of us go through life hanging onto a belief that we cannot do something simply because we failed at it once before?

How many of us are being held back by old, outdated beliefs that no longer serve us?

It can be pretty scary to try something new, especially when we don’t know the outcome. We might fail or succeed – but if we don’t try, we’ll never know.`

Limiting beliefs are like a mental roadblock that tells us we can’t do something before we’ve even tried.

Worse, how many of us are being held back by someone else’s limiting beliefs?

Sometimes other people’s limiting beliefs can hold us back even more than our own. Maybe they don’t think we can accomplish something, so we start to believe them. Or maybe they’re afraid of change, so they try to keep us from moving forward. Either way, it’s important to remember that we’re the only ones who get to decide what we’re capable of. We’re the only ones who get to choose what path we take in life.

Just like the baby elephant, we may try and try to break free from our circumstances, but eventually, we give up and accept our fate.

We can easily break free from our past, but we may still believe that we’re stuck there because it’s all we’ve ever known.

Come and join my next Emotional Freedom Technique training to notice and overcome what beliefs keep you tied to the fence, making you falsely believe you can never get away.