Life's Lessons: Barriers exist only in one’s mind

The shark quickly swam around the tank, attacked and ate the 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 behaviour every few minutes to no avail.  Eventually, the shark gave up. 

This experiment was repeated several times over the next few weeks. Each time, the shark got less aggressive and made fewer attempts to attack, until eventually, it stopped attacking altogether. When the fiberglass divider was removed, the shark didn’t attack, as it had been trained to believe a barrier existed between it and the bait fish.

Moral: After experiencing setbacks and failures, many of us emotionally give up and stop trying. We continue to see a barrier in our minds, even when no ‘real’ barrier exists between where we are and where we want to go.