“Why did you fail?” asks one student to another.
“Because I had that instructor,” came the reply.
“Why did you pass?” asks the second student.
“Because I had the same instructor.”
This exchange speaks to the tremendous importance of your personal reaction to matters in a given situation or environment. What was your focus? Where did you expend your energies? How did you bolster your view of yourself, your self-image? How did you respond? Surely, you didn’t resign to be the elephant in the room, did you?
Let me explain.
Newborn elephants, earmarked for the circus, are chained to large stakes driven in the ground. However much they yank, these creatures cannot dislodge their captivity. Fruitless efforts later, they succumb to the new reality. Though untethered, the elephant’s psyche remains chained. Its resistance is quelled and seemingly futile. The elephant’s power has been psychologically neutered. The elephant survives in a form of depression.
What an extraordinary condition.
The enormously powerful student follows the directives of the instructor by reacting to the situation at hand. So much is dependent on the student regardless of a bad or good instructor. So much success, or failure, resides within you and your self-image.
In the classroom or in life, don’t be the elephant in the room.
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