The Prisons we create within our own Mind

Two Short Motivational Moral Stories

The Prisons of Our Minds

The prisons we create within our mind can have a devastating effect on our wellbeing. This story that follows is a scientific fact, and demonstrates beautifully how as humans we create prisons within our own mind. Usually these prisons keep us from achieving our greatest desires and a lot of the time we have no idea we’ve even created them.

These prisons we create in our own mind are also known as a glass ceiling. An invisible ceiling we believe we can’t move past. This glass ceiling feeling could be found in our relationships, our monetary income, business dealings or just about any aspects within our own lives.

The Common House Flea

The common house flea is one of the smallest animals on the earth. Not much bigger than a couple of millimetres. However this little creature has a remarkable ability. It has the power in those tiny back legs to propel itself to jump 200 times it’s own height. I’m relation to a cat that’s over 16 times higher.

Now if you capture a house flea and place a glass cup over them, something very interesting happens.

When the flea jumps to try and escape he will keep hitting his little head on the bottom of the glass cup. After a few more attempts and with each jump ending in a headache, the flea realises what’s happening and will adjust his jumping height accordingly. The flea will now jump to just under this new glass roof or glass ceiling. After all why would you want to jump and keep smacking your head on the roof.

Now for the really interesting bit.

When you remove the glass our poor flea has now been conditioned into jumping at this new height. He has learnt from experience that if he jumps any higher it will smack its head on the glass ceiling.

This is the glass ceiling syndrome or the prisons we create in our own minds. Everyone of us as humans will create these so called glass ceilings within our minds. From telling yourself your not good enough, to feeling self pity over a lack of money. Everyone of us as humans has at least a few of these glass ceilings or prisons created.

Here’s Another example:

A fully grown elephant is one of the strongest and largest mammals to walk the earth and a far cry from the little house flea in the previous story. However the poor elephant will also develop its own glass ceiling.

The Elephant Trainer

This is also a scientifically proven idea and the story was told to me by a Loas forest farmer who used elephants to do the work of a tractor.

When I was a Buddhist monk I used to watch every morning as an old man and his son walked from there house that over looked the Mekong river down to a small enclosed paddock to collect there two prized elephants. They would climb on top and go to work in the forest. Everyday at around lunch time they would come out of the forest and visit a local small cafe/restaurant. They used to come out of the forest on top of these two magnificent looking elephants and gently tie them to a wooden post by a loose knot. I watched this spectacle for a few days before I asked them why don’t the elephants just pull at the rope and escape.

The old man told me something that stuck in my mind ever since.

He told me that when the elephants were very young they would be tied up at night to a long stake that was firmly placed into the ground. Then tied very firmly with a knot that when pulled would only get tighter onto that stake.

No matter how hard the little baby elephant pulled he wouldn’t be able to get himself loose. And slowly over a few weeks the elephant would give up entirely. The little elephant realised it was no use pulling and excepted his new bondage. He wouldn’t bother to pull any more. And that’s how as adults they were confident that the elephants wouldn’t pull at their rope and never escape.

I found this story to be very sad indeed. How could such a beautiful and powerful animal such as an elephant be so conditioned and so quickly.

Because of this experience I got an enlightenment moment that has never left me.

I realised that its not just the elephant or the house flea that have this problem. I realised instantly as humans we all do the same thing to ourselves and in many different disguises. As humans we all create our own glass ceilings or prisons we create in our own minds.

Maybe it’s playing the self pity game, oh way does this always happen to me. Maybe we try a few times at something then give up believing we can’t do it. Maybe we get hurt in relationship after relationship and decide that we don’t want to do that again. Whatever it is as humans we are all guilty of creating these glass ceilings around ourselves.

There is hope

Some of you reading this may of realised you are guilty of doing these things to yourself, and can easily see your own glass ceilings. Others may realise you also have created these glass ceilings but can’t actually see where they are in your life.

This is where I can come in and help. I am a certified NLP Practitioner, a 3 Principles Buddhist life coach and with a simple chat I can help you notice your glass ceilings. I have now helped many others remove their glass ceilings and create brand new horizons for themselves, I’ve been professional doing this for over 4 years and have helped many many others see for themselves just where there limiting beliefs may be.

Kind regards

Dhamma Tāpasā* (Andrew Hallas)

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