“It isn’t enough to think outside the box. Thinking is passive. Get used to acting outside the box.”
—Tim Ferriss
I walked into a counselor’s office with a loved one. As I looked around at her little Zen garden, the picture of her twin boys with their mom and all the books that make me green with envy, my eyes fell upon an outline of a box on the wall. In the box are the words “think outside the,” and on the outside, it said “box.”
We can all be so focused on what we should be doing, meeting the expectations other people put on us. Sure, people probably have our best interests in mind, or at least they think so. Most of the time, it’s the “they think so” part. However, it’s not their life. We are living our lives.
I know a youth pastor who hates what he calls “the Mennonite game.” He feels that when Mennonite and Amish people ask who your parents and grandparents are and they put it together, then they know you. I don’t know how accurate it is, but it is an interesting thought. I know I’ve been called Levi’s, Luella’s and Kyle before.
We like the old and familiar; change can be downright scary. As Mark Twain once observed, the only one who likes change is a wet baby. Some people make it their mission in life to keep others in the box. Why? Because they don’t know how to live with the unfamiliar. They tell us, “That is not the way things are done” or “We don’t do things around here that way.” It has nothing to do with us and everything to do with them.
When we start living outside the box, we our disrupting the established order of things. Also, if I am being honest, we might be reminding them of a missed opportunity. So they tell us how it didn’t work for them. However, we can use that as a lesson to learn from their mistakes. Just because something didn’t work out for another person doesn’t mean it won’t work out for us.
We must learn to ignore. Nobody knows what God put on the inside of us. Do you know how many people told me I would never make it as a writer, but here I am. It’s not easy to swim upstream, but winners never take the easy way out. Sometimes we feel like giving up when so many voices in our head are telling us we can’t. It is up to us to decide if we are going to listen to that noise or not.
We have so much information now. We can look up how other people overcame the odds. We can read to feed our mindset and to expand our horizons. The more we learn and study, the more we will be equipped to handle the opportunities that present themselves.
There is a saying that goes, “If you want what you keep on getting, then keep on doing what you are doing.” In other words we have the power to change who we let into our lives. The older I get, the pickier I am about who I spend time with. Next year I will be 40, and I choose to spend my next 40 years with people who challenge me to think outside the box. Being pushed is not fun, but staying miserable is worse. I’d rather be uncomfortable for a season than sorry for a lifetime.
Kyle Snyder can be emailed at kylesnyder86@yahoo.com.
