Fleas, Elephants & Limiting Beliefs

Do you have any limiting beliefs that may be holding you back from being and achieving all that you are capable of?

Today, I want to share a lesson from fleas and elephants in order to help all of us to not allow limiting beliefs to hinder us. (Click on image below if you prefer to watch a video rather than read.)

Even though the average lifespan today is about 79 years old, sadly, most people die inside somewhere between 25-35 years old.

What do I mean by that?

We all grow up with hopes, dreams, and ambitions of what we want in life … whatever “success” may look like to us. We often have BIG dreams and BIG ideas!

But somewhere along the way, life beats us up enough to cause most people to give up on their dreams.

We give up on the idea that we can achieve something greater than just the normal, not so exciting life we see around us.

It reminds me of a story about how to train fleas.

Did you know that a flea has the greatest vertical jumping ability of all the insects, jumping up to 36 inches off the ground?

Yet, if you can take a flea and put it in a mason jar with the lid on it, that flea after jumping numerous times hitting its head on the top of the jar will train itself to jump just a little lower to not hit the lid, essentially limiting its jumping to that height.

So much so that after four or five days you can take the lid off and the flea will not escape.

It will still only jump the height of the jar, believing it will hit its head on the lid even after it has been removed!

Why? Because the flea believes since it tried numerous times, maybe thousands of times, and failed … that if it tries again, it will fail again.

Little does it know that if it tried one more time, it would succeed! Which reminds me of the story of the elephant’s limiting belief!

Did you know that if you take a baby elephant and stake it to the ground with some heavy rope around its leg that it will pull and pull to try to get free, but it can’t because it isn’t strong enough yet?

Eventually that elephant gives up on trying. Even when it is full-grown, it never tries because it has bought into the idea that it will fail!

It makes me wonder, how many of us are believing “This is all I can do?”

Do we believe this is all we can do physically?

With building our business?

Do we believe that financial freedom and independence just isn’t something we can achieve?

If you do decide to try, you may fail initially or you may succeed, I don’t know. (We will discuss what “failure” really is and what it is not in another Wisdom Wednesday.)

But I KNOW this … if we don’t ever try to jump out of the jar, we have a 100% chance of failing!

Whatever the limiting belief may be for you … I just want to share with you that you are capable of SO MUCH MORE than you give yourself credit for. I believe this with all my heart!

I believe what one of my late mentors, Zig Ziglar, said about you…

“You were born for achievement, engineered for success and endowed with the seeds of greatness.”

I believe that you were created on purpose, for a purpose, and that your life has meaning, and that you were born to win and positively impact other's lives, whatever that may look like in God’s perfect plan for you.

So, let’s learn from the fleas, let’s learn from the elephants and let’s not, just because we have failed in something in the past, give up.

Our past failure is no indication of our future results so let’s not let those beliefs limit us!

Let’s believe that we have been empowered with greatness within us with God-given talents, abilities, and uniqueness that nobody else has.

And let’s go out there … set a goal … and GO AFTER IT!

There is no reason why you cannot accomplish it if you choose to do it and go after it every single day.

Choose to believe you can!

That is 90% of winning the battle.

Until next time, this is Allan Blain. Make it a great one!