Don’t Flea.

We create imaginary boundaries and limit our ways of thinking, which keep us stuck in our situations. If you want the potential to grow and jump higher, you have a few choices to make.

In the spring of 2021, I went on a long hike up the Little Red River with my blue heeler and best girl, Charlie. Typically, we kept to the rocky paths and chased waterfalls, but she had a knack for rolling around in the tall grass any chance she’d get. When we made it back home, I noticed she was scratching persistently at her neck and just couldn't seem to stop. I was annoyed – since not even two weeks earlier, I had just purchased a seven-dollar flea collar at the Dollar General. So I went to Petco, bought the expensive shampoo, some flea/tick drops, and did my best to extinguish the fleas from their hitch-hiking adventure. Shortly after Charlie’s bath, I saw one last flea trying to reenact the final scene from Lone Survivor on my bathroom tile until I trapped him in a container.  

A few hours had passed and having reached the decision to keep the little guy for a bit longer – because I was bored and had nothing better to do. I closed the door to the bathroom and took the lid off Sir Benjamin Hopping's container (aka Ben Hopping) to see if he would stick around. He doesn't; he jumps out. He's a FLEA. But a few months prior, I learned that when fleas are placed in a jar, they, of course, try to jump out – but after a lid is put on, the fleas stop attempting to escape as they learn the boundaries of their new environment. Even when the lid is removed, fleas never try jumping out again. Their thinking has created the 'lid' as a boundary, which conditions them to limit their jumping. I reinstalled the lid on Sir Ben's container anyway and decided to wait. A few days go by, and sure enough, he isn't jumping quite as high and hitting the lid anymore. He adjusted to his new limits. 

"If you don't doubt, you don't change. You stay stuck wherever you are. If you have to have finite answers to infinite questions, you're not going to move". - Madeleine L'Engle

Now, the details of this story are slightly exaggerated, but the point is, We're all a little bit like Sir Ben sometimes. Our environments condition us. We create imaginary boundaries “jars” and limit the ways of thinking that keep us stuck in our situations. 

If you want the potential to grow and jump higher, you have a few choices to make: 

• Avoid the jar.

• Evaluate your current jar.

• Ask yourself if someone else put you in it.

• Decide if the jar serves a purpose.

Avoiding the jar.

Avoiding the jar is usually realized in hindsight, but that's okay. The saying 'hindsight is always 20/20" isn't a negative one. Using your newly found 20/20 vision to look at your future through healthy evolved lenses is one of the greatest gifts almost all species possess. If the koala learns from its mistakes with a brain as smooth as Vin Diesel's head, then surely you can follow suit. Figure out how you ended up in your past jars and spend time thinking about how you could do it differently. 

Evaluating your current jar.

We all get stuck in jars from time to time, but what we don't do enough is evaluate them. When Sir Benjamin Hopping was stuck in his jar, he knew there had once been a lid on top of it, but from that point on, he never thought to look up. If you choose to accept the truth for what it is and never think to question it, then you can never grow, and that, my friend, is called complacency. Madeleine L'Engle once said, "If you don't doubt, you don't change. You stay stuck wherever you are. If you have to have finite answers to infinite questions, you're not going to move".

Did someone else put you there?

If you didn't end up in a jar from insecurities or complacency, then chances are, someone else put you in there. It happens; we care what other people think even when we don't want to. Societal influence, peer pressure, and family expectations are some of the leading causes of our jars. Re-evaluating your current jar and who put you in it are the first steps to freedom.

Does the jar have a purpose?

Jars aren't always a bad thing, but only when we choose them. Sometimes it is very healthy for us to set boundaries for ourselves. When we establish limits and give them time restraints, we give ourselves a habitat to grow in. Just go into the jar knowing that it's temporary and not a permanent residence. 

Just remember – self-awareness is vital. Having weekly or even daily conversations with yourself can lead you to mind-blowing revelations about who you are as an individual. Make sure you are honest with yourself and your intentions – if you aren't being honest with yourself, it will be substantially more challenging to be honest with anyone else.