As a man was passing by the elephants, he suddenly stopped, confused by the fact that these huge creatures were being held by only a small rope tied to their front leg. No chains, no cages. It was obvious that the elephants could, at any time, break away from their bonds but for some reason, they did not.
He saw a trainer
nearby and asked why these animals just stood there and made no attempt to get
away. “Well,” trainer said, “when they are very young and much smaller we use the same size rope to tie them and, at
that age, it’s enough to hold them. As they grow up, they are conditioned to
believe they cannot break away. They believe the rope can still hold them, so
they never try to break free.”
The man was amazed. These animals could at
any time break free from their bonds but because they believed they couldn’t,
they were stuck right where they were. Like the elephants, how many of us go through
life hanging onto a belief that we cannot do something, simply because we
failed at it once before?
For all the aspiring accountancy career
students; “Failure is part of learning; we should never give up the struggle in
life.”
