Training Fleas

Okay, I have been pondering this blog thing and thinking about some of the things that I need to record. This is not so much what happened in our lives today as it is a lesson I was taught 17 years ago in the mission field. President Kenneth S. Armstrong taught this in a Zone Conference and it was something I loved then and love still today. I have used this lesson as the Scout Master with my scouts, I have used it when teaching the Elders Quorum and also while training sales people, service technicians and managers. I recall sitting in a Focus on the Future conference in Las Vegas back in 2005 and being pleasantly surprised when the speaker, Krish Dhanam, taught the same lesson. It was very cool. Later I was listening to a Zig Ziglar cd on sales and he taught the same lesson. Well, Krish Dhanam worked for Ziglar and President Armstrong had a business where he specialized in training sales people. I suspect that he learned the lesson on training fleas from Zig Ziglar (considered one of the greatest sales trainers ever). Well, a lot of rambling here but that is my history with this lesson.

Training Fleas.

How high or far can a flea jump? Fleas have been known to jump up to 6 feet or roughly 350 times their body length. That is quite impressive. If you were to take a flea and place it in a jar it would have no problem jumping out of that jar. To train a flea however, all you need to do is place the lid on the jar. After the flea jumps and rams its head into the lid of the jar a few times it will realize that it hurts. As it recognizes the pain that exists when it hits the lid it makes a change to its jumping power. Suddenly it will no longer jump to its potential but will jump only to a height just under that of the lid on the jar. It believes that if it jumps any higher it will hit the lid and it will experience pain. So what happens if the lid of the jar is removed? It does not matter, the flea believes that the lid exists and that there will be pain when it jumps to that height or beyond. The flea has successfully been trained. The sad part is that it will never jump to its potential because it believes that there is a lid and pain preventing it from doing so.

Whenever I teach this I like to add my own thoughts and that is simply this: Don't Be a Flea! The experiences we are sometimes called to endure can be painful, they can be hard and we may hit our heads a few times. There is nothing that says this life is going to be easy. The key is to go forward with faith, believing that you can achieve whatever it is you set out to do. When we fail, when we hit our heads it hurts but we need to get up and try, try again. The lid will not always be there and our potential to do is far greater then the limitations of the lid. In the last couple of years I started using one of President Monsons quotes a long with this. He has quoted this a few times, you may recognize it. "If we do not try then we cannot do, and if we cannot do then why are we here?"

Okay, so that is pretty much the lesson on Training Fleas. Though it is not directly associated with the activities of this day I have had several occassions over the last few months when this lesson has come to mind. There are moments when different experiences have left me believing that lids exist and I find myself afraid and wanting to give up. It is in these times that a gentle reminder comes and I reminded what I was previously taught; Dont Be a Flea.