Christine Tjia

If a young elephant is under captive, there will be a shackle around the leg chained to a tree so that it will not escape. Since it is still young, it doesn't hv the energy to pull the whole tree over. After repeated tries, it realized its efforts are useless. It finally gave up and stop struggling.

Now the strange thing is if the elephant is fully grown and it is chained to something smaller like a stick, it will still NOT escape. Not because it doesn't have the energy to but because it still thinks itself is being chained to an unmovable tree (yep, simple as that!).

In life, do you hv a “shackle” of some kind around your leg? What is it that holds you back from experiencing the freedom and liberty in life?

If you become comfortable with your captivity, you may be just like an elephant that was trained to believe it could not break free.

If you think even harder, there might be more than one shackles around yr leg. For yours truly here, I hv realized there are indeed more than one around mine. One of it is the fear of knives. Since young, cutters and knives are my ultimate weaknesses! Even a plastic McDonald knife, I wouldn't dare to run my finger tips across the ridges (yes, I'm not kidding!). Not something to be proud of, especially if you are teased by your friends all the way from primary school to colleagues at work, haha!

And this is why, here goes my deepest gratitude to my HK fren, who not only taught me but run through countless practices with me on this phobia. He had put so much thoughts and efforts with crazy and silly analogies (this elephant is one of it!) to help me overcome and finally, I did - I now proudly proclaimed that this fear has past by me.

I can now soap and wash a knife without feeling that chill down the back of my spine. I can now cut veggies without thinking that my fingers are soon on the floor. I can now handle cutters confidently without staring at it seriously to see if the blades are falling off any sooner. And all these, I'm not exaggerating, my friends!

I feel so free and liberated from - the fear of knives, the habits of asking others for help and the addictions of looking for scissors as substitutes (haha!). For most of the time, old habits die hard. But with a lot of work and patience (thank you again!), changes are easily accomplished. Your old self is gone, you feel alive again and freedom is at last within your reach!