The Elephant and the Rope
You’re too scared to succeed
a modern parable — source unknown
A trainer ties a baby elephant to a stake with a small rope.
The tiny elephant tries to break free but can’t.
As it grows stronger, it still believes the rope is unbreakable and never tries again, even though it easily could.
The mindset blocking us from success
“Man is not trapped by circumstances, but by his perception of them.”
— Epictetus
How many times have you told yourself “I can’t do that”?
The famous quote comes to mind:
“Whether you think you can, or you think you can’t — you’re right.”
— Henry Ford
The truth is, you are only two things from achieving anything in life (in this particular order):
The belief you can do it
Practice
Without the first, you can’t begin. Without the belief you can play guitar, you’ll never sit down to learn the chords.
We tell ourselves we can’t do something because we’re not as skilled, successful or accomplished as people who have already done it. But this is obvious. We haven’t started yet.
Why do we find it so hard to believe that the people who have accomplished it were once at the beginning too?
And so, we’re stuck in this unproductive loop of waiting until we’ve achieved something to believe we’re capable of it.
Anything new requires us to stretch beyond our current capability — but the mental blocks we place on ourselves (the lack of self-confidence) prevent us from starting.
One of the reasons children learn so much, and have so much fun is that they aren’t able to compute this fear yet.
They just jump in and get started.
The key to escaping this mental prison
“You have to teach yourself to believe in the possibility of success. And you have to teach yourself not to be ashamed of the distance between who you are and what you can do.”
— Devon Eriksen
Your power in life is not the ability to learn quickly, or the hand-eye coordination to execute it.
Your power in life is having the ability to believe you can overcome a difficult challenge.
You can’t get to the part where you practice, and show heart and resilience without the belief that it’s possible.
And unfortunately, not many of us are very good at that…yet!
“Belief in your ability to succeed is like a muscle. It has to be trained.”
— Devon Eriksen
Start doing things you can’t do. Start believing you can overcome the challenge.
Stop saying “I can’t”, and start saying “I can’t…yet”
Understand this fundamental concept of life when you feel defeated, daunted or scared:
If you work at something you can’t do now, you will eventually succeed.
Don’t let yourself be stopped by…you…any longer. What for? Give it a shot.
The worst that can happen is you fail, which you would’ve done anyway had you never started.
Sincerely,
eren
Follow me on Substack, Instagram and LinkedIn for short bursts of motivation and peace, and to follow along on my journey of creating the world’s best in-person mindset workshop.
Can't say it enough........ just start. In the language of my tribe, kamba from Kenya, we say that the only difficult thing is the one that has not been started yet. To quote Nike, just do it.
Beautifully said.