Are you wearing a chain around your foot?

Elephants are taught from an early age when they are baby elephants that if they are chained to a pole they can not escape, they are stuck, can’t get away. This is something that they continue to practice even when they are grown up, not realizing their own capacity as they grow bigger and bigger and stronger and stronger. They are stuck in what they were taught from an early age and therefore you can see elephants that stay chained around a pole on only one foot.

So, back to my question, Are You a chained elephant?

Are you stuck in patterns that you were taught at an early age, maybe as a child? Are you stuck in a mindset that applied to you years ago? Are you practicing something that you don’t think twice about why you are practicing it? What I mean is, do you ever question what you are doing and why? Many people do this usually at the age of being a teenager, but some of us just accept life as it is and do not question why things are the way they are.

Let me tell you a story… a chain reaction…

There is a story about a preparation for a thanksgiving dinner that I once heard a CEO tell his employees to make them think. The story goes something like this:

A woman is preparing the thanksgiving turkey but before she put the turkey in the oven, she cuts the edges off the turkey. One of her friends asks her why she was cutting of the edges like that. The answer she received was, ”-because my mother has always done that! This is the way we prepare our thanksgiving turkey in our family.”

Of course this question continued to be in her mind and she asked her mother, why the ends always are cut off on the thanksgiving turkey. Her mother gave her the exact same answer as her daughter just gave her friend: ”-That is how we prepare our thanksgiving turkey in our family.” The mothers mother, the woman’s grandmother overheard the conversation and started laughing. The daughter and the mother are confused over the reaction. The Grandmother then answers very simply, -”I had to cut off the edges, because the turkey wouldn’t fit in the tray if I didn’t.”

I think that this story is a good story that makes you think of why you do what you do. Do we just keep going because this is the way we always have done it or do we take action and question what we do? Dare to do it differently?

Maybe we should think more about what we do and why we do it. It doesn’t always have to be the same to get the best result.

All the best,

Carina Asp
MarketingAsp