06/06/2026
The Difference between Elephants, Fleas, Pikes… and You!
When still a baby, the elephant is tethered by a very thick rope to a stake firmly hammered into the ground. The elephant tries several times to get free, but it lacks the strength to do so. After a year, the stake and the rope are still strong enough to keep a small elephant tethered, although it continues to try, unsuccessfully, to get free. At this point, the animal realizes that the rope will always be too strong and so it gives up.
When it reaches adulthood, the elephant can still remember how, for a long time, it had wasted its energy trying to escape captivity. At this stage, the trainer can tether the elephant with a slender thread tied to a broom handle, and the elephant will make no attempt to escape to freedom.
The story of the jumping flea is similar. Fleas can jump extremely high—hundreds of times their body size and far beyond the limit of a jar. When a flea is placed in a jar with the lid on, it jumps repeatedly, hitting the lid each time. Eventually, it adapts and begins to jump only as high as the lid allows.
What happens when the lid is removed?
The flea still does not jump any higher. It has learned a limitation that no longer exists.
A similar observation is often illustrated with a predatory pike placed in a tank with smaller fish, separated by a transparent barrier.
The pike instinctively attacks, again and again, striking the barrier each time. After repeated failed attempts, it eventually stops trying. Even when the barrier is removed and the smaller fish swim freely around it, the pike no longer attacks. It has learned that effort is useless—and behaves accordingly.
From the day we are born, we are conditioned by our trainers. Apart from our natural instincts, we arrive with zero knowledge, and everything we do, or think is shaped by conditioning from our parents, siblings, friends, teachers, bosses, politicians, religious leaders, advertisements, media, and television.
Have you ever considered why television programming is actually called programming?
Most conditioning is subtle and repetitive. It enters the subconscious mind and is stored for decision-making later in life. While some of this conditioning is designed to keep us safe, much of it limits our personal growth.
We become tethered by invisible mental and emotional chains.
• Our parents tell us, “Children are to be seen and not heard.”
• Our teachers tell us, “Only speak when spoken to.”
• Our families tell us what we should become.
• Our friends tell us, “Never leave a secure job.”
• Politicians tell us to be fearful.
• Society tells us to play it safe.
• Educators tell us what we cannot do.
• The media tells us we are not good enough.
These messages, repeated over time, form beliefs. And those beliefs shape our behavior.
Just like the elephant that no longer tests the rope, the flea that no longer jumps higher, and the pike that no longer hunts, we too begin to live within limits that may no longer be real.
The difference is this: as human beings, we have the unique ability to recognize these patterns, question them, and change them.
Are you aware of your limitations?
Have you considered changing the way you think?
Hypnotherapy may be the option you have been looking for.
Hypnosis can help you change the way you think.
Change your mind… Change your life!
