When a circus needs a new elephant, they usually get orphaned babies.
When the young elephant arrives, they don’t start with tricks. First, they put a collar around its neck and peg it to the ground with a rope. The peg is strong enough to hold a baby elephant. It can walk around, but if it pulls, it can’t escape.
After a while, the young elephant understands it’s not strong enough. So it stops pulling. It accepts the situation.
That’s when the training begins.
As the elephant grows, the collar stays on. The peg stays in the ground. And even when it becomes a fully grown adult - one of the most powerful animals on the planet - it never tries to escape.
Not because it can’t.
But because it still believes it can’t.
I heard this story during a life coaching course I took last year. I don’t know if it’s true - but that doesn’t matter. It stuck with me, and I share it with my own students regularly.
Do you feel sorry for the elephant? I do a little.
What a shame. If only it knew how strong it had become. One pull - one single pull - and it would be free.
But it won’t try. The belief was formed too early, ran too deep, and never got updated.
That’s what conditioning does.
I had my own version of that peg for a long time.
Growing up, I was convinced there was only one way to live a good life: get a degree, find a stable job at a big company, climb the ladder. Get married, buy a house, have kids. That was the plan. That was success. I never questioned it - I just assumed it was the only path available to someone like me.
When Rosie and I graduated, she wanted to travel before settling down. I said no. We had to be responsible. We couldn’t just go off traveling - that was for rich people, not us.
I was a fully grown elephant, completely convinced the peg was still holding me.
It took years - new people, new environments, new experiences - before I finally understood there were other paths. That I could actually live differently. That the rope I thought was holding me down had never really been there.
And once I pulled? Everything changed.
Now I’ll ask you the same question I ask myself.
Which beliefs did you form early on - in childhood, as a teenager, or even as an adult - that are still quietly running your life today? Beliefs that were real once, but are completely outdated now?
Which pegs are you still not pulling on... even though you absolutely could?
If you feel like your inner-young-elephant needs support finding the peg, reply to this email, I read every message. And if you want to work on it properly, here’s how we can do that together.
J