An old rusty chain keeps us bound to sin, the past, and our old recycled thoughts. At a glance, we might think it is strong. Unbreakable. It has been there for so long, generation after generation, we might concede it is a chain we cannot break.

If it could be broken, we reason, someone would have broken it already.

Like the tattered elephant groomed for a life in the circus, we are broken. We have lost faith that we could ever break what binds us even if the chain were now only a small cord on a flimsy little stake in the ground.

We have grown stronger, wiser, and have increased in compassion, yet, we can never be free as long as the chain remains. We turn to others, hopeful they will break through what keeps us in bondage. But they do not. They cannot. If only they could free themselves, we think, then we too could free ourselves.

And what binds us remains.

Drugs, alcohol, attempted suicide, child abuse, shame, guilt, depression, it all remains intact because no one will take the step required to break the chain that binds us to it. It is someone else's job, after all. We are the helpless character's in someone else's play.

But one day, perhaps by chance, you have a glimpse of that old rusty chain. For a fleeting moment, a new idea flows through your being - that rusted out chain cannot possibly hold you captive. It is frail, fragments, a mere skeleton of a chain. And for the first time, you imagine a strong gust of wind crumbling it to dust and sweeping it away.

Then you feel a breeze sweep across your cheeks.

As you watch the chain disintegrate and fly away into the blowing breeze, you wonder how you might have ever thought that chain held you captive. You feel a freedom you have never felt before, and yet it feels so familiar. As though it was stored away in the very recesses of your soul all this time, waiting for you to notice it.

Belief is a strange thing.

"Whether you believe you can, or can't, either way, you are right." - Henry Ford

Attitude and beliefs determine your future, not the past, your thoughts or other people's beliefs. The power is and has always been yours.

"We are broken, and we will not be mended until we realize we are unbreakable." - Unknown

Give yourself permission to set yourself free.