Learned Helplessness
We are supernatural beings created in the image and likeness of God - “We are created to Create”. This is evident in the myriad advancements and exploits we humans have made since existence and how we continually evolve to break new grounds in all facets of life.
An amalgam of the human “brain and mind” is what separates us from other creatures. It is an intricately designed super-computer which makes us multidimensional and puts us hierarchically at the acme of all living things, and in proximity to the divine. Begs the question, “if we’re all created with such supernatural ability, why do most of us perform below our inherently infinite capability?”.
Underperformance in comparison to one’s limitless capabilities may be attributed to a plethora of reasons, but one underpinning element that limits or shackles most of us is our “mindset”. Mindset according to the Oxford English Dictionary are our established set of beliefs, attitudes, and assumptions we create about ourselves. They are our views on how the world works, what we believe we’re capable of or deserve, and what is possible.
Unsurprisingly, we’re not born with pre-installed mindsets. If anything, we come into the world with limitless potential. As we journey through life, we learn these fixed and limiting ways of thinking from people in our lives and the culture we experience from our upbringing through to adulthood.
Think of a young circus elephant shackled to a stake in the ground. As a baby, hard as it may try, the elephant isn’t strong enough to pull up the stake. Over years of learning its efforts of unshackling itself from the stake in the ground are futile, it eventually stops trying and succumbs to the limitations put on it. As it grows in stature, it undoubtedly gains sufficient size and strength to unshackle itself, but it remains tamed and tied up by something infinitesimal in comparison it its power and ability. This is due to a mindset propagated on what it’s learned over the years - psychologists term this as “learned helplessness”.
Sadly, most of us behave like the aforementioned elephant. At some point in life, people or experiences have put on us limitations which are contrary to the inherent potential we’re born with, and as such, our belief of what we’re capable of has been set at that limiting level ever since. Good news is - just as helplessness is learned, it is also possible to learn to be limitless. Therefore, my charge to self and you the reader this week is to learn and begin living a limitless mindset which is directly proportional to the infinite potential we are created with.
Remember - “You’re Braver that you Believe, Stronger than you Seem and Smarter than you Think” - Christopher Robin.
Peace, Love and Light.