Notice how if you’re doing something noble or that’s successful, that makes you _truly_ happy, you can keep going for a long time and not feel tired.

Your mind is incredibly powerful, put it to work! Remember, it can work both for you or against you, so chose wisely….!

Always Looking for More Tools,
Akpolarmom

A Trance is a Terrible Thing to Waste, I’ll be Back to put YOURS to Use Soon!

My rider labeled my elephant stubborn because the elephant refused to listen. Just like you said, the rider knows these concepts. Really the elephant was just continually ignorant of the rider, doing it’s own thing, for it’s own reasons. Knowing these reasons is indeed necessary to change that pattern, and like you said, just calling it stubborn did not bring me any further. Yet that’s how I perceived it at the time. If anything, my rider was stubborn in not acknowledging the elephants need.

I do not agree with the following statement: “Without looking at what the rider is doing, you can’t possibly have the slightest idea about what made the elephant go this or that way”

In a healthy human being, that is usually true, concerning the bigger picture. Still, in the moment an elephant does lots of things on its own, like keeping the car on the road. You don’t have to think about that and explicitly command your elephant to do so. Suppose your rider gets distracted by the radio for half an hour, you would probably not have crashed, but gotten off course, without any idea of where you are (at least on something as straightforward as a motorway).

I agree with your last statement. The irony is that when people talk or think about other people, mostly their rider is considered, especially if you do not personally know this person, like celebrities, etc. This is why I (my reasoning, thinking rider) did not really notice me (the quite lovely elephant) for quite some time. It seems to me that regardless of how ugly the rider can get (because of being very malleable), the elephants in most, maybe all people are really beautiful. That’s my source of self-love, perhaps it helps others, too.

Thank you for the book tip, I put it on my wishlist.

The confusion comes from the fact that there isn’t actually any split in the mind. All functions of the mind are separated and connected at the same time. The wisdom is in recognizing that thoughts and feelings are tightly connected (which the metaphor actually acknowledge) and interact very strongly with each other. Thoughts influence feelings, feelings influence thoughts.

Keeping with the metaphor, I’d like to point out that elephants can’t be stubborn. Stubbornness is a human concept based in conscious evaluation of actions. If you label what the elephant is doing as “being stubborn”, you have just reduced the information available to you. Stubbornness is a rather abstract notion; what the elephant is doing in any given moment is not.

Curiously, the same is true for the rider. Without looking at what the rider is doing, you can’t possibly have the slightest idea about what made the elephant go this or that way. Of course, the outside world, the environment the elephant and the rider navigate through, needs to be kept in awareness, too, for the same reason.

I’d like to recommend a very insightful book about this kind of awareness. It’s called, surprisingly enough, “Awareness”, written by Anthony de Mello.

The most important point I’d like to stress in the rider/elephant metaphor is this: you are not the rider, nor are you the elephant.

There came a time where I noticed that I seemed to follow all these rules and demands and became more and more unhappy. More and more, my elephant distrusted its rider and ignored its commands, rendering me a seemingly dishonest person – someone who promises one thing and does other things. My rider had the best intentions, but my elephant was very stubborn.

Psychologically, my impulse control was severely damaged. But I also read that impulse control is like a muscle. You can train it. It seems to me that I needed some time for the muscle to heal, and now I’m in recovery, training it. Of course you have to do that responsibly. Saying “I will work eight hours every day, starting tomorrow” is like saying “I will lift 100kg weights for four hours in a row every day, starting tomorrow”. It won’t work. You might be able to get there, but not right away.

“The gist of it was that I suggested to his body to stop the pain as long as Chris went easy enough on himself to stay reasonably healthy”

Getting back to the metaphor, your elephant has to learn to trust its rider again, and for that the rider has to make good choices. And for that it has to listen to the elephant, get to know it really well, otherwise the elephant will ignore him again. So be a smart rider. Think about your long-term goals. Then think about how you’re going to implement these goals. This is called making implementation intentions. But for every intention, ask your elephant kindly, whether he feels up to it. If the elephant gets anxious, you’re asking for too much. What you’re aiming at is a response like “Okay, I think I can do that. It takes some effort, but it’s possible”. Once you got that, thank your elephant for its cooperation. Every person essentially is a team of a rider and an elephant. Whatever you do, you’re both in this together. The elephant needs to trust the rider to make wise choices – but also to let go when it’s alright.

-Jon