Refuse to be a Circus Elephant

Great leaders are not without personal challenges; Winston Churchill and Abraham Lincoln battled depression, but they saw a better future where others saw doom. Successful people go where they are celebrated and not where they are merely tolerated. Marcus Buckingham stammered his way into a person of great influence. He left his native country for the US because according to him “In England the streets are small, the cars are small, and the dreams are small. I could not have done in the UK what I have done here (US)”.

Sitting on a laurel is almost like a circus elephant. The other day I was watching on television how they train a circus elephant. While the elephant is young, they leash the elephant on a strong tree or object, and it tries to pull away for many days and then it gives up. Upon giving up something almost eternal happens in the thinking of the elephant. It almost goes like; “if you can’t beat them you better join them”. The elephants cedes its strength to this one battle of many wars that it has lost and at any other time the subconscious mind goes back to that point of defeat and says I will not even try again, am a defeated foe, my fate is written. Once the elephant has been broken that way, next time they thither it to a small shrub and it will not pull away. At circus they tie the leash to a small metal post and to the elephant and now grown, the pole is Mount Everest.

When we decide that we have arrived, we mentally bind ourselves to that achievement so much that we feel there is nothing else to accomplish. When faced with a small challenge that would otherwise promote us to higher places, we seat down resigned to our past feats. There is a whole new world of deeds and accomplishments that we may never experience if we decide to be leashed to yesterday’s achievements. In life we may lose one battle or the other, but this does not mean we have lost the war. Life has many battles in a large war. Let’s learn how to shake off negative experiences and learn from them and move on to the next challenge.