YOU ANT, MAKE THE ELEPHANT DANCE TO YOUR TUNE






Pic.: Vinod Krishnan

“The elephant may be a mighty animal,” my friend Soniya told me last afternoon, “but, even a tiny ant can make him dance!”

Obviously, what Soniya wanted to tell me was this: If we assume we are some mighty elephants, let’s not look down upon the tiny ants around us… Yes, any moment, even the tiniest of them can sneak into one of our giant ears, and make our life miserable! Similarly, if we assume we are nothing – too small, too insignificant in life… let’s not forget about our irrepressible power to make the Goliath dance, powerlessly!

But, Sonia had come on a mission, last noon. “Sir, you are going very, very slow in implementing your vision,” she began to persuade me, “You need to move quickly… You need to act fast.”

Soniya was right. I remembered the beautiful fable - ‘The Ant and the Elephant’. In this little classic, the author, Vince Poscente, drills down the message: Look friend, in life, if you have to move forward and fast, if you have to achieve your goals, accomplish your mission, then be aware of your conscious and subconscious minds. Your conscious mind is like the tiny ant who knows what she wants to achieve, where she wants to go.  It processes about two-thousand neurons a second. On the other side, your subconscious mind is like the giant elephant, who, bloated with tons and tons of fears, doubts, false beliefs, prejudices and ignorance, argues with you as to why you can’t achieve your goal, why you can’t’ reach there. It can process – hold your breath – four-billion neurons a second! And, if you are that ant headed towards west sitting on an elephant who is headed towards east… yes, imagine, how will you ever reach your destination!

The moral of the story, therefore, is: If you have to reach a certain destination, let your conscious mind and the subconscious mind, both, walk together in the direction you desire… Let the ant make the elephant dance to her tune!


We all are familiar with this drama within us… The ant-like conscious mind dreams; and, suddenly, the elephant-like subconscious mind wakes up with a billion reasons why we wouldn't be able to realized our dreams….

The desire and dreams come from the conscious mind…
The fears and doubts come from the subconscious mind…

I had bought and read Vince Poscente’s book, ‘The Ant and the Elephant’, nearly two years ago. Perhaps, Soniya had come, last afternoon, to remind me to read the book, all over again… yes, when I needed its message the most… “Don’t get frightened of the big elephant,” perhaps, she wanted to assure me, “sneak into one of his flappy ears, and make him dance to your tune!”

Thank-you Sonia…




GERALD D’CUNHA

Video courtesy: YouTube


Comments

Seema Nair said…
Beautiful! - Seema Nair
December 10, 2014 at 8:52 PM
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