STOP looking outside the Box
Hollow apothegm warning “We need to think outside the box” what does this mean?
Ask yourself? What does it mean?
It means that what you are doing is not good enough and there is some magical solution that exists in a world that you have no access to.
The box is all that you can have access to and all that you know.
- This “box” is your reality
- This “box” is your knowledge
- This “box” is your capacity
- This “box is your judgment…
to think outside of it is impossible, because YOU ARE THE BOX…and you can never think outside yourself.
To believe that you have access to ideas and to work outside your capacity will only create a false-conception of searching, that will set you back further, that will cause you to feel in-adequate, that will effect your work and creativity.
Because people are telling you YOUR BOX IS NOT GOOD ENOUGH
Think Inside The Box…Increase Your Capacity
I am suggesting that you are not using this box to its capacity; that the box has much more to offer than you are giving it credit for. By learning and increasing your capacity to complete tasks, and by taking action in small steps using what you have right now. You will increase your utilization of the box.
Once you realize that the box is your capacity, the question now becomes;
How do you fit within this box?
You will have to explore what you are capable of; this is accomplished through doing things, a “task-focused mind”…People who explore the boundaries of the box do so with tasks; focusing on knowing what you can do. Once you know what you can do, do more of it, do more of it and learn from the doing – Until you find that your capacity has been reached and now you fully fit the box.
No-one will ever reach their potential-capacity (Filling the Box). What we can strive to do is flourish within our applied-capacity (Our use of the Box) and explore through completing and learning from a task-focused mind the edges of what’s possible.
michael cardus is create-learning
image by The.Rohit
Agree completely. Looking outside the box may stimulate interesting looking ideas ideas, but if you start from there you assume that you have to (mixing metaphors here) toss the baby out with the bathwater.
This assumes that both the baby and bathwater are deficient – taking this perspective disables you from achieving any of the out-of-box thinking.
So, start from a position of noticing your good/existing resources vs the deficit. In particular, when the situation seems hopeless and babe/bathwater must go. That will feel good for five minutes. Work with your resources.
Alan…I agree with both ideas the mixing metaphors and noticing good/existing resources.
Taking time to find small actions result in improved performance.
I like this Mike,
Semantics are important and this is a different way of talking about the box – cup half empty or half full kind of dilemma. You’re right, it is all in the box!
Thank you Billy.
For the majority of problems faced, you have already solved them and it takes the exploration of your existing knowledge & resources.
Often we are to quick to jump to a solution that works for someone else, That is their box…how does this solution or their solution work in the context of you.