The Tethered Elephant
This article was originally shared on Substack.
A baby elephant is taken captive and tethered to a stake. It tries to pull itself free but fails to do so. It is too small, and its fetters are too strong to break. Over and over it tries to free itself to no avail. Eventually, it believes freeing itself is an impossibility and stops making attempts. Time passes, and the elephant remains tethered despite having grown into its adult strength because it still believes in the limitations it accepted as a child.
Or so the story goes.
We accumulate tethers throughout our lives. Some are imposed on us, some are self-inflicted, and some are a combination of the two. More often than not they’re created not out of malice, but out of caution, or a projection by others who have their own tethers.
From around when STEAM Powered was conceived as an idle thought, I started to identify my tethers and, one by one, have been learning to break them. It’s hard, and at times terrifying, but it is freeing.
For me, and likely some of you as well, impostor syndrome and fear of being an inconvenience or an imposition to others is a major personal hurdle. They’re a couple of my tethers and part of the reason why I sat on the idea of STEAM Powered for about a year before I acted on it. But I began sawing away at them when I took the first step and asked two of my friends to be guests on the show.
The second step was when I clicked the publish button on YouTube for the first time2.3
There was a lot of nervous swearing involved.
It’s now been more than two and a half years, and I have had the privilege of speaking with and being inspired by 54 guests (plus 3 in the editing queue). Along the way, I have learned a lot and have been trying more new things outside of my comfort zone.
Many variations of this image have been bandied about the place, often depicting a sad, tiny, circle representing your comfort zone, and the space around it, or a gigantic circle, where the magic is and telling people to make a leap. Several people have quite correctly asked: Why the comfort zone is so negatively represented? What if I don't want magic? Why does it have to be a leap, why can’t it be a nice, sensible step?
If there isn’t anything you’re particularly motivated to do outside your comfort zone then this is perfectly fine, and the advice is not aimed at you.
But if there is something you want to do, but you’re afraid to or don’t know how to take those first steps, then let’s return to Mary Schmich’s “Do one thing every day that scares you.”
That one, scary thing might be as revolutionary as reaching out to someone for advice or starting to jot down that concept on paper. Even just committing to the very idea that you’re taking steps could be scary.
Whatever that daily ‘one thing’ is, you are adding to your collection of experiences. Some may be as an epiphany, but most will not be ground-breaking. Even if the result of the new experience is that you don’t think you’ll do that again, this is still valuable information. You’ve pushed your personal boundaries and discovered something new about yourself and that can be both scary and wonderful at the same time.
Maybe you’ll even find and weaken some of your tethers in the process.
On that final note, I hope you all have a chance to rest and recharge this holiday season, and may we break some tethers in the coming year.
Author’s Note: I wrote the first draft of this musing over a year ago just after I began this Substack. I had made a note that even though I was a year into it, I was still feeling very uncomfortable about reaching out to friends and strangers for this project, and I clearly hadn’t felt I had made enough progress to justify encouraging others to be proactive about their aspirations. Revisiting this draft now and reflecting on my words, I can say with confidence that the discomfort is greatly lessened and it’s all because I took those first steps and kept taking the ones after.
STEAM Powered
I spoke with Shirley Yu, Founder of Choosii, the Social App for Collectors. Shirley is also an environmental portraiture and conceptual still-life photographer whose clients include the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and Time. In our conversation, we talk about Shirley's journey from computer science to entrepreneurism, her creative process, and building communities with our collections.
Quite Interesting
Space Brains is a podcast about science-fiction films where hosts Surrey Hughes and Mark Regan speak about how the art and the science come together to create great movies. Space Brains is also a SciFi Film Festival that highlights independent filmmakers, and focuses on giving regional Western Australian filmmakers a platform for their work. They had some excellent-sounding speakers and panels at their inaugural event in 2022 and it’ll be great to see how they grow next year.
RPGeeks is a Twitch stream, podcast, and YouTube channel by four professional science communicators who combine their love of both D&D and science into one neat and hilarious package.
Oh, the Places Your Data Will Go! is a great piece about data sharing in the pseudo-style of Dr Seuss. The authors also very helpfully provide links to resources about the data-sharing environment for those who want to know more about our data and where it goes.
Incoming self-promo: I’ve started a new substack where I’ll be sharing tales of my podcasting journey. As the wearer of all hats in the indie podcasting space, you’ll get to hear about some of the tools I use, how I use them, and a few of my frustrations. There will occasionally be scripts I use to help with my workflow, and I’ll also speak about my foray into number-chasing, aka learning about analytics and social media promotion. I hope to give it a good balance between fun/weird and nerdy, so come find me at Ask Me About My Podcast.
Thanks for reading, and see you next time!
Stay curious,
— Michele
Footnotes
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More popularly referenced in Baz Luhrmann’s song “Everybody’s Free (To Wear Sunscreen)”. ↩
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I must admit, in this case, the fear of imposition helped. I’d already taken up a couple of hours of my friend’s time. It’d be dreadfully rude if I didn’t follow through. ↩
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My first episode Stem Cell Biology with Rebecca Lim. ↩