The story of the elephant and the rope

November 24, 2021

"You begin to fly when you let go of self-limiting beliefs and allow your mind and aspirations to rise to greater heights." ―Brian Tracy

Earlier this week one of my coaching/consulting clients sent this story to me after we talked about learned helplessness and now I want to share it with you because it's a great one!

"When walking through an elephant camp, a man noticed that the elephants were only secured with a small rope that was tied around one ankle. He wondered why the elephants didn’t break free from the rope, as the elephants were certainly strong enough to do so.


He asked a trainer why the elephants didn’t try to break free, and the trainer responded by saying that they use the same size rope for baby elephants all the way up to adulthood. Because they’re too small when they’re babies to break free from the rope, they grow up being conditioned that the rope is stronger than they are. As adults, they think the rope can still hold them, so they don’t try to fight it."


It's so easy to go through life thinking that you can't do something just because you've failed at it repeatedly in the past. Often times we've failed in the past because our approach was wrong, we didn't have enough knowledge at the time, or who knows what it was...

The point is if you don't let go of your limiting beliefs you will have those beliefs hold you down for the rest of your life. Taking risks and being comfortable with failure is part of succeeding. Don't let one incident of failure deter you from the greatness you were born to live!


Thank you for reading A Brilliant Tribe.