Learning how we Learn: Part 2

Principles into Practice with Kain Ramsay

Many people in the world today live out their lives making their daily decisions based upon the decisions they made about themselves years ago. We develop core unconscious beliefs about ourselves as children; it’s in our childhood we determine our self-worth and value, our beliefs about who we are and what defines us – ‘the Glass Ceiling’ as it were, which often, we will often ‘unknowingly’ allow to cap our potential. These beliefs mould us as humans, and give us the rules we live by. Some might say our core education comes from the classroom - but I’m going to suggest that it doesn’t! We receive our primary education from our family experience when we are children – unintentionally we become conditioned to be who we believe ourselves to be, when we don’t conform to our beliefs, we’re out the comfort zone - and this can often be a scary place to be! I can remember getting taken to the circus with my sister when I was small. I hated the clowns with a vengeance; however the animals always fascinated me – particularly the elephants! Elephants are the largest living land animal in the world and can weigh up to 27,000 lbs.! Yet, a single stake and small chain tied around one foot can hold a circus elephant in place. Q) Why? A) When circus elephants are young, the stake and the chain are strong enough to keep them from escaping. Circus elephants are conditioned to believe that they can’t escape - even when they are fully grown adult elephants. When a baby elephant that doesn’t have much strength is tied to a huge metal peg that’s been driven into the ground, he’ll fight it and fight it and fight it until he accepts he isn’t strong enough to pull it out. Eventually he gives up, believing that that he’ll never be strong enough to break free, so he ends up stuck there - stuck in his childhood belief that it doesn’t matter how hard he fights, he’ll never be able to break free from that peg! Well like elephants, WE are conditioned to believe certain ideas, concepts or the virtues of others and then unknowingly, we can allow them to hold us in place! If you can see how this could happen, could it be possibly be a difference between what we believe to be true, and what IS true! That’s all elephant syndrome is just, simply believing something to be true based upon a misconception rather than truth. Are human beings the same? – You bet we are! From a young age we get pegged down and get so used to believing that this is just the way things are, I’ll never be strong enough to break free and be the kind of person I really want to be – WE THEREFORE LIVE A SELF FULFILLING PROPHECY BY BECOMING WHOEVER WE BELIEVE THAT WE ARE. The identity we attached ourselves to becomes the ball and chain around our necks that prevents us from ever becoming the kind of people that we truly want to be – OTHERWISE KNOWN AS A SLAVE or a VICTIM MENTALITY! Although you might not see any limitations you have AS limitations at the moment, you may just have accepted some things to be true about yourself which may not necessarily ever have been true in the first place. Often in life we can become a certain way of being, or act in a certain way so that other people accept us or validate us however the person that we've become may not necessarily be WHO WE ACTUALLY ARE! ... but unfortunately, this is how we learn!