Shark Bait
During a research
experiment a marine biologist placed a shark into a large holding tank and then
released several small bait fish into the tank.
As you would expect,
the shark quickly swam around the tank, attacked and ate the smaller fish.
The marine biologist
then inserted a strong piece of clear fiberglass into the tank, creating two
separate partitions. She then put the shark on one side of the fiberglass and a
new set of bait fish on the other.
Again, the shark
quickly attacked. This time, however, the shark slammed into the
fiberglass divider and bounced off. Undeterred, the shark kept repeating
this behavior every few minutes to no avail. Meanwhile, the bait fish
swam around unharmed in the second partition. Eventually, about an hour
into the experiment, the shark gave up.
This experiment was
repeated several dozen times over the next few weeks. Each time, the
shark got less aggressive and made fewer attempts to attack the bait fish,
until eventually the shark got tired of hitting the fiberglass divider and
simply stopped attacking altogether.
The marine biologist
then removed the fiberglass divider, but the shark didn’t attack. The
shark was trained to believe a barrier existed between it and the bait fish, so
the bait fish swam wherever they wished, free from harm.
The moral: Many of us, after experiencing setbacks
and failures, emotionally give up and stop trying. Like the shark in the story,
we believe that because we were unsuccessful in the past, we will always be
unsuccessful. In other words, we continue to see a barrier in our heads, even
when no ‘real’ barrier exists between where we are and where we want to go.
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