At birth, fleas are incredibly resilient. The sky is the limit. They are able to jump several feet — the human equivalent of 100 yards into the air.
To train them, you put the fleas in a jar and screw the lid on. In the beginning, the fleas use their innate skill and talent to jump as high as they can, determined to get out. However, the flea keeps hitting the lid. The lid hurts. Gradually the fleas stop jumping as high — jumping just high enough to fall short of the lid. When you take the lid off the jar, the flea continues to only jump high enough not to hit the lid, forever tainted by the conditioning and pain of prior limitation.
For most of us, our response to life is no different.
Each and every one of us is born with the opportunity and desire to make a difference. So what stops us? The lid.
The lid is the teacher that tells us we will never amount to anything. The lid is not making the team. The lid is not getting into the school that you just “had to get into.” The lid is that voice in our head that tells us we aren’t good enough. The lid is our decision to wait until we are a bit more “established” to take a leap and create the change we want to see in the world. The lid is failure. The lid is fear.
However, for all of us — just as with the fleas — there is no lid. The lid is merely a figment of our imagination. A psychological barrier that we invented.
With that as truth, the question that remains is simple: are you willing to try to jump out of the jar?