Life’s lessons: conditioned to believe

While passing by an elephant shed, a man suddenly stopped. He noticed the huge creatures tied by ropes made no efforts to break free. No chains and no cages. It was obvious that the elephants could easily tear the ropes apart and flee, however, for some reason they didn’t try to do so. Being confused, he approached one of the trainers nearby and asked him why the elephants stood there and made no attempt to break free. 

“Well,” the trainer said, “When these elephants were young, we used to tie them up with the same ropes. At that age, they couldn’t break free.” 

“Now, they are conditioned to believe that they cannot break away. They believe that the rope can still hold them back and therefore, they never try to break away,” the trainer continued. The man was amazed listening to this. The animals could easily break free anytime but they have been conditioned into believing that they cannot. That is why they are still stuck to this place. Similar to the elephants, we are often tricked into believing that we cannot succeed in doing something, simply because we had failed in it once.

MORAL: Failure is a part of learning. We should never give up the struggle in life. You fail not because you are  destined to fail, but because there are lessons that you need to learn as you move on with your life.