Charlie And The Chocolate Factory: Limiting Beliefs

Charlie Bucket, the main character in Roald Dahl's Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, is a young boy with big dreams. Every single day he walks by Willy Wonka's enormous chocolate factory on his way to and from school and smells the wonderful scent of chocolate and all different types of candy that are being produced behind the walls of the giant factory. While doing so, he dreams of seeing the inside of the factory and make his own candy creations in the factory that's been hidden from the public for many years due to Willy Wonka closing the factory's gates to preserve his candy creating secrets.

However, this all changes when Mr. Willy Wonka, the eccentric owner of the greatest chocolate factory into his world, decides to open the doors of his factory to five lucky children and their parents. In order to choose who will enter the factory, Mr. Wonka devises a plan to hide five golden tickets beneath the wrappers of his famous chocolate bars.

Charlie longs for the opportunity to visit the most prestigious chocolate factory in the world by receiving one of these tickets but his limiting beliefs have held him back from being the recipient of one of the tickets. The limiting beliefs that are holding Charlie back from beginning his journey from his ordinary world to the special world are his family and peers.

Charlie's main limiting belief is his family for a number of reasons. First of all, his family is extremely poor. Therefore, Charlie's ordinary world consists of living in a tiny house with his parents, Mr. and Mrs. Bucket, and all four of his grandparents. His grandparents sharing the only bed in the house, located in the only bedroom, and Charlie and his parents sleeping on mattresses on the floor. Also, it consists of three sparse meals a day, which is hardly enough to nourish a growing boy and limiting money that results in few luxury items like chocolate bars. However, once a year, on his birthday, Charlie gets one bar of Wonka chocolate, which he savors over many months. Since the contest consists of having to find the golden ticket within a chocolate bar, the fact Charlie's family is poor is a limiting belief because it dramatically reduces his chance at finding a golden ticket.

Another limiting belief for Charlie is his peers. When I say peers, I don't mean the people he spends time with or goes to school with. Peers refer to the millions of people in the world his age that are trying to find one of the five golden tickets while he is. Charlie's peers are a limiting belief because, like the fact his family is poor, they lower his chances of finding one of the golden tickets.

In the end, Charlie's limiting beliefs make it more difficult to cross the threshold in his journey toward seeing Willy Wonka's chocolate factory which is too bad. In most journeys, whether in books or life, the hero attempts to use the limiting beliefs in his life as excuses so they don't leave their ordinary world and cross the threshold toward their goal. This is not the case in this story. Charlie is more than ready to cross the threshold and see the many unknown wonders within Mr. Wonka's chocolate factory. However, when I finished this post, Charlie was about to open the single Wonka chocolate bar that he had received for his birthday. Who knows, with a little bit of luck, it could be the one containing the ticket that would send him on the journey of a life time.