If You’re Feeling Stuck In A Negative Situation, This Is For You.
I recently heard an interesting speech about being stuck in a negative situation, but I couldn’t find out who made it. I will try recreating the transcript here.
If you draw a circle around an ant, the ant will believe that there is a barrier around it and that it can’t escape. If you draw an even smaller circle the ant, It will believe that its prison just got smaller. The circle is not trapping the ant. The ant is trapped because believes that it is dangerous to cross the circle.
The only things imprisoning the ant are the thoughts of its own mind. Everyone today has drawn a circle around themselves that they don’t even realize is there. And the circle your mind has drawn for you comes from the experiences you’ve had in your life. They come from your childhood: the amount of love, respect belief your parents did or didn’t give you. They come from what society told you that you could accomplish based on how you look and who you are. They come from toxic people that have mistreated you and lowered your self-confidence. They come from comparing yourself to others online and the amount of self-criticism it comes with. — thinking too much of what people think of you and how the fear of that holds you back. These experiences influence the size of your circle. They have shaped who you think you are, what you think you deserve, and how far you believe you can go.
When you see the ant in the circle, you just want to tell the ant to go for it, make the leap, and believe in itself. Because you can see that freedom is on the other side of that imaginary wall. But telling people to believe in themselves doesn’t mean anything, because that is not how belief works. Think about it, if I held a gun to my head and told you that I’ll pull the trigger if you didn’t start to immediately believe that I was a god. No matter how much you wanted to believe that, the most you can lie to me. This means that even with everything on the line you still couldn’t believe, even if you wanted to because we can’t truly believe things without some type of evidence.
The same applies to the belief we have in ourselves and the same applies to the ant. It can’t leave its comfort zone because it doesn’t have any evidence that it is safe to do so.
In a further example, a spider is trapped by a similar pattern. Confined by the same imaginary walls, but on one occasion while it is running. It accidentally crosses the line that it didn’t believe that it could cross. And from this point onwards it now has the evidence that there is nothing to clear and that the limit was an illusion and so the spider is now free. Free from that circle and it can no longer be held back by similar patterns.
The limits we’ve given ourselves feel very real and if nothing changes they risk holding you back for the rest of your life. They risk keeping you stuck in relationships you know are killing your happiness and a job that has sucked the meaning out of your existence. They risk imprisoning you in a life that isn’t true to who you are and who you are really capable of becoming.
Fortunately, beliefs and facts are two different things and just like the ant, the limits only exist in your mind. You won’t find inspiring words, motivational videos, or quotes on Instagram that will break down the walls your mind has built. Unfortunately, the wall is too strong. YOU have to do that. You have to make the decision that you would rather step out of your self-limiting beliefs, and step outside of your comfort zone than live the rest of your life unfulfilled, unhappy, and trapped.
You have to realize that staying in your circle is a risk. You have to stop acting like you have a contract to live forever, and you have to realize that the only thing stopping you from being the best you is a fictional idea, a story that you created in your own mind. Nothing is holding you back. And once you take that first step outside the circle as the spider did. These limiting beliefs will lose their power over you and they will never imprison you again.