Letting go of the past

As a man was walking past some elephants in a circus, he suddenly stopped, confused by the fact that these large animals were being held by only a small rope tied to their front leg. No chains, no cages. It was obvious that the elephants could, at anytime, break away from their bonds. Yet they stayed were they were.

He asked the trainer why the animals didn't try to escape. “Well,” the trainer explained, “when they were very young and much smaller we used the same size rope to tie them and, at that size, it was enough to hold them. As they grow up, they are conditioned to believe they cannot break away. They believe the rope can still hold them, so they never try to break free.”

The man was amazed. These animals could at any time break free from their bonds but because they believed they couldn’t, they were stuck right where they were.

Like the elephants, how many of us go through life hanging onto a belief that we cannot do something, simply because we failed at it once before?

Failure is part of learning; we should never give up the struggle in life.

Sometimes it can be difficult to let go of the past. But often, it's the only way we see any progress. Not only do we need to learn, we sometimes need to unlearn and relearn. That could mean breaking down a long established belief or perception. For me it meant overcoming the fear and embarrassment that I had experienced in primary school when I was laughed at for asking a seemingly 'stupid' question. It took me years to gain the confidence to speak in public and overcome the thought that may be I was the only one in the room who didn't understand what was being said. I asked a question once during a conference plenary, and afterwards several delegates came up to me and said 'thanks for asking that question, I didn't understand either, but was too scared to ask'.

We are all in the same boat it seems. Letting go of previous bad experiences and trying again with a 'clean sheet' is a way of unlearning. It is freedom to learn from failures and previous shortcomings so we can do it better next time. What do you do in your classroom to give learners a fresh chance to let go of the past?

Image by Fotopedia

Letting go of the past by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.
Based on a work at steve-wheeler.blogspot.com.