Welcome back Viphilus*
Motivational speakers and
preachers like using the story about how elephants are controlled. There are
dozens of versions so I will just go with the one that I have heard.
In India, when a wild
elephant is caught, they tie its leg to a stake in the ground with a very large
chain. He walks around the stake, yanking on the chain, looking for a way to
break free. Try as he might the elephant is unable to free himself. Pretty
soon, the elephant “realizes” that his chain permits him to venture a limited
distance from the stake. The trainers observe when he stops trying to venture
beyond that point … beyond the radius of his chain … and they then begin
replacing the chain with decreasingly thinner chain, then rope, until
eventually, only a thin string is attached to his leg. By this point he is no
longer wild; he has stopped fighting. Then they begin moving the stake to new
locations, starting with the heavy chain again each time. The elephant returns
to being wild so they go through the leash-reducing process each time. But
interestingly, the process gets shorter and shorter each time. Eventually, they
can move the stake to wherever they want and remove the string completely, but
the elephant will never venture beyond the radius of the string, even though it
is no longer there. He is chained-in-his-mind and responds to a limitation that
no longer exists. Finally, as the story goes, he is no ready for work in a
circus because the radius used to train the elephant is exactly the radius of
typical circus rings.
The preachers and self-help
gurus who use this story (or whatever version of it they heard) love it because
it’s a great metaphor to show how we too permit limitations in our own minds. I
have spent most of my adult life with this metaphor up my sleeve to pull out
whenever I want to make the point about the power of mental chains and the
importance of establishing new training rings.
BUT … I don’t know if this
story is true. Even SNOPES.COM doesn’t provide me with a definitive answer. So
until I find out … definitively … whether it is true, then I will stop using it
as if it’s true. But I’ll continue using as I have done here because two things
about it ARE TRUE.
- It provides a simple mental picture of how the brain is
trained.
- Human brains ARE trained exactly this way, whether
elephants brains are or not.
So, in our story, whether it
be fact or urban myth, the elephant training ring is created by imposing a real
limitation, with specific elements (the stake and leash), in order to create a
new mental story about the elephant’s freedom. Last week we looked at the power
that stories play in rewiring our brains. The way that we intentionally start
framing those stories … the way we start hacking away at a brand new forest
path with our feeble machete … is to create some important limitations on
ourselves. And by “important” I mean limitations that will ultimately serve you
in your greater mission or purpose.
This is done by instituting
new rules and rituals for yourself, much the way that rules and rituals were
established within you when you were a tot. The difference now though is that
it is you, and not your parents, who are deciding what those rules and rituals
will be. Let me give you two examples from my own life.
SLEEP
I struggled with insomnia
for about 15-20 years. I had been a rotating shift-worker in Canada’s national
weather service for 15 years and my circadian rhythm was completely whacked. In
the mid 90s I made a shift to more day-work but the insomnia remained. By the
time I reached the early 2000s it was bad and I think contributed, in part, to
my eventual emotional breakdown. My work hours couldn’t be blamed any more. What
could I do?
My “crash” provided the
nitro to explode open the desire for a new neural pathway. I began reading
everything I could about sleep disorders, tinkering with numerous changes to my
normal life practices. Over a period of a few years I found that three in
particular were key to regaining control of my sleep.
RULE – Stop eating in the evening and stop
drinking after about 8pm – my body
didn’t need the challenge of digestion and fluid-handling while I was trying to
sleep.
RULE – Put myself to bed earlier – almost everything I read said that the hours
of sleep before midnight provide the body with better recovery-sleep than the
hours after midnight, so I just started sleeping-in on the front end of the
night rather than at the end.
RITUALS – Learn to shut down the chatter in my
head – this was the hardest but also the most
important. I learned how to distract my mind and give it other sleep-friendly
tasks, but mostly I just learned how to intentionally differ the chatter until
the morning, giving myself permission to sleep first and then resume “worrying”
when I got up (of course, when I woke up the stuff I worried about seemed less
dire).
The first two were new rules
that I imposed on myself … micromanaging myself, if you will. The third was new
rituals … I gave myself specific sleep-friendly activities, such as reading or
meditating. The funny thing though was that as time went on sleep came easier
because of the two rules and I needed the rituals less and less. In the end, I
was able to put myself to sleep on command, and wake within 5-10 minutes of
when I chose to wake up, without an alarm clock. (note: I haven’t used an alarm
in more than a decade)
THINKING
Prior to my crash my
thinking was scattered and unfocused. I worried about everything and easily
took offence … at almost everything. I was living an undisciplined life and was
pretty much a pawn for anyone who had “something else” for me to do. As with
sleep, the crash provided the motivational nitro to make changes in how I used
my mind for more productive things that I chose to do rather than what everyone
else in the world wanted me to do (or think). Here are some rules and rituals
that I imposed on myself that turned that around.
RULE
– This one happened automatically after my crash … no radio or CD in the car. Whenever I travelled alone I felt the
need for silence so that I could ponder and reflect on how/why I had a
breakdown. This went on for about 3 years until I re-emerged as a much stronger
person. But it was at this point where intention took over. I discovered that I
was now intentionally choosing to have silence because of the pure joy I found
in being alone with my thoughts. Eventually I would decide before my car-time
exactly what I would think about on the trip … choosing exactly what to ponder
or problem-solve or concentrate on or … whatever. The point was that I was
gaining control of what I was thinking about. Silence was golden. It would be
10 years before the radio or CD got turned back on again, but even now I would
estimate that 80% of my car time is in silence so that I can think or pray.
RITUAL – Read Solomon’s Proverbs every day – 31 proverbs and 31 days in most months:
coincidence? I don’t think so. For a couple of years I read one chapter of
proverbs each morning … whatever the day of the month it was would be the same
chapter in proverbs that I would read. This turned out to be a powerful regime
of expectation-managing, reality-affirming wisdom. This ritual alone had an
enormous impact of my thinking.
RULE – Don’t take offence – one of the gems of wisdom I picked up from my
daily Solomon ingestion was in Proverbs 19:11 where he writes, “a person’s
wisdom yields patience; it is to one’s glory to overlook an offence.” I was
plagued with negative thoughts stemming from unforgiveness and outright
bitterness. This was killing me. I had read that harbouring bitterness was
“like drinking poison in the hopes that it will kill your enemy.” That was a
powerful insight … an epiphany for me. As a Christian I had learned of the
importance of forgiveness, although I guess I sucked at it. However, if I
learned to not take offence in the first place then there would be nothing for
which I would need to extend forgiveness. This made perfect sense to me, so I
employed this rule into my life. This has been one off the most transformative
things for me. But look at the process. My burnout or breakdown was the nitro
that blasted open a new path for me as I could no longer keep harbouring
resentment or bitterness. The quote about poison along with Prov.19:11 were
like dynamite that widened that new neural path. And the new rule of choosing
to not take offence is the machete and personal work that I do to ensure that
the new pathway becomes permanent while the old jungle path of taking offence
grows over through lack of use.
ADDITIONAL (SHARPER) MACHETES
Let me finish by
demonstrating how we refine the work we have already done. I’ll stick with the
“take no offence” rule. Sometimes in weak moments that old path was still too
easy to take … and I could feel offence rising within me. What could I do?
Well, I learned additional rules and rituals … other paths to open up to help
steer me away from the instant hair-trigger response of being offended. These
are purely driven by choice and make me stronger as an individual.
Maybe they are right? I’ve
learned to ask myself in situations, “Is the person’s actions justified towards
me? Are their actions a valid indictment of my words or behaviour? Is there
something that I can learn from this situation? Is this simply a situation
where I need to understand that they are lashing out in their own weakness so I
need to pray for that person or learn to be more patient with people in
general?” These and a hundred other
questions now come to me much more easily in moments when I am tempted to take
offence. They help by putting a road bump in front of myself to slow me down as I soberly assess what is happening. In countless situations it has led to deeper
insights about myself and the work that I still need to do, or it has led to
powerful conversations where a relationship gets stronger. (10 years ago this
dramatically improved the relationship I have with my wife).
You can create your own
elephant training ring … your own rules and limitations that guide you
intentionally towards who you want to be. As a Christian I don’t believe that
we can do this work completely on our own … God’s power is necessary to do this
perfectly. But I also know, from experience, that HE isn’t going to do all the
work for you. You still have to pick up your own machete. You still have to
decide to stop letting everyone and everything else be your excuse for
mediocrity or failure. Once you do, whether by choice, by dynamite or by nitro,
creating new and easier paths for your elephant isn’t easy, but it is very very
doable with consistency and persistence.
Happy training.
Next month we will look at
the action-attitudes necessary for character transformation.
I hope to see you back next
Monday.
Blessings Viphilus,
Your friend, Omega Man
* Viphilus means, "lover of life"
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