Prince Ea, the poet of a new era tackling the mind, heart and the condition of being human and alive, recounts the story/legend: Harry Houdini, one of the most famous magicians that ever lived and a man with a pretty well-endowed ego boasted that he could break out of any jail cell. That there were no walls or bars that could hold him and that he could just walk in in his street clothes and be out in an hour.

One jail took his challenge and the game was on. The crowds gathered in front of the jail to watch him break free. Excitement was in the air. Houdini walked in and the doors were shut behind him. He took off his coat and then his belt which held a hidden piece of flexible and strong steal. An hour passed and the confidence he had was waning and, as panicky sweat soaked his body, he continued trying again, and again and again with no results. Finally he leaned on the steel bars exhausted and in despair for having failed to hold his cocky promise to the world. And as he leaned – the door screeched and opened. It was never locked at all. The presumptions we carry into situations and events determine how we’re going to handle them, how we’re going to feel, what course of action we’re going to take. The truth is not the truth. What we presume is the truth and we get so stuck within our own view and expectation. We overthink each little thing and miss the simplest most commonsense solutions staring us in the face.

It doesn’t matter that he was free to walk out at any moment. It doesn’t matter that the cell doors weren’t really locked. In Houdini’s mind they were, and mindset is the strongest most impermeable lock (or key) there is or ever will be. No man made lock could have ever been as strong as the lock in his head was. He was defeated before he even started as a huge elephant, conditioned to be held in place by a tiny rope. It never crosses the elephant’s mind that this string cannot hold him because he was taught to believe that it could since he was a baby.

How many jail cells are you sitting in within your mind? How many locks are you fiddling with and losing your sanity without ever trying to get of your knees and just push the damn door open and walk out a free (wo)man? What have you been made to believe is true for you and decided to accept someone’s suggestion of you or your abilities as a fact? You will be taught lies, you will learn lies from perverted examples, your mind will trick you into seeing monsters that aren’t there, obstacles that are mere pebbles, made hydras by the energy and attention you give them. You’ll be shaped and formed by your beliefs about you – be those beliefs liberating or limiting ones that wall you in. What if it is not really locked but thinking makes it so? What if the door itself is an illusion? You’re a free human being. Show some dignity and act like it.