You can enable self help motivation and overcome “learned helplessness” through the following two examples.
Example 1.
In many of the logging camps in India they still use elephants to fell and stack trees. The training of the elephant starts when it is still a baby and the first thing that it will be taught is not to run away from the logging camp. The trainer achieves this by driving a large wooden stake into the ground and by tying a rope around the baby elephants leg and then tying the rope to the stake. No matter how hard the baby elephant tries it cannot pull the stake out of the ground and although it keeps on trying eventually it will give up because it has learned that while the rope is attached to its leg it cannot get free. This procedure carries on into the elephants adulthood and although it is now immensely strong and could easily rip the stake from the ground it will not. The elephant now believes that once its handler has attached the rope to it’s leg it is incapable of escaping.
This is known as “learned helplessness”.
Example 2.
Some time ago an experiment was conducted to help prove the theory of learned helplessness. A large fish-tank was constructed and filled with water. The tank was then divided down the middle using a clear sheet of glass thereby creating two sections. Into one section was placed a number of small fish. In the other section was placed a Pike, a big fish that just loves eating little fishes. As could be expected the Pike tried to attack the small fish but was prevented from doing so by the glass partition. The Pike tried to attack the small fish for some time but eventually gave up trying. The glass partition was then removed and the Pike had free access to the small fish yet instead of attacking them it stayed in its side of the tank. It would swim to where the glass partition used to be then turn and swim back to its end of the tank. The small fish knowing the Pike to be a predator stayed away from it in their end of the tank. There was nothing to prevent the Pike from attacking the small fish yet once again, through learned helplessness, it did not do so. No self help motivation here!
Know that you have read these stories you can ask yourself whether learned helplessness is playing a part in your life. Do you have the equivalent of a rope around your leg like the elephant? or are you being held back by a glass partition like the Pike?
Many of us suffer from learned helplessness. As children we may have been repeatedly told, often by significant others such as teachers, parents or relatives, that we were “no good” at something or would never be able to do “this” or “that”. We heard this so often that we came to believe it and we no longer even try to do these things. Things we may dearly wish to achieve.
Yet, all we have to do to overcome learned helplessness is to realize that as adults we should be in charge of our own destinies, we should be in control, we should be utilizing a little self help motivation.
If you feel that you have a set of beliefs that are holding you back, take the time to look at them very carefully.
Remember the Elephant and the Pike. What you believe you can’t do doesn’t mean you can’t do it.
You will only ever know by trying and by using self help motivation.
I wish you Health, Wealth and Happiness.
