People will sometimes put each other in boxes and have biases toward one another because of what they look like or where they come from or who they are. But ultimately, it’s up to us to decide who we are.
Rich Moore
We all live in boxes!
Sometimes our box is big, other times small.
Your box may be rock solid, or it could be flimsy.
Maybe your box is physical. Or it could be a metaphysical box.
My most identified box is a mix of brown, black, and white. Yours might be black, white, or many others.
That’s right, we all live in boxes.
And each of us has a different set of boxes in which we live.
Regardless of the shape, size, comfort, or discomfort, we feel with our boxes, they all have one thing in common.
Our boxes serve to limit us.
Our boxes limit how we think of ourselves.
They limit us in our lives, restrict our collaboration with others, limit us in teams, and limit us at work.
You may have figured out by now that I am not just talking about where you live.
No, your home may be the easiest to identify, and manage, of all your boxes.
I am talking about the identities, roles, and responsibilities we take on and their expectations.
At home, your box may be as a father, mother, husband, wife, son, or daughter. You will have boxes that overlap. For example, you could be a mother, wife, and daughter.
In teams, your box might be a captain, coach, attacker, or defender.
At work, your box might be identified on an organization chart. For example, you could be a janitor, receptionist, or CEO.
My ethnicity is a complex mix of African, American, Asian, European, and South American influences. Yours is different.
How do we get in those boxes?
We put ourselves in some boxes. We allow others to put us in other boxes. Or society itself may put us in a particular box.
Each of us is unique in that we live within an amazing collection of boxes.
As we think of our boxes, some of them make us proud. Others deliver so many negative feelings.
We like to compare our boxes with others. We are happy with our box when we compare it to what we consider inferior boxes, yet the same box is a source of embarrassment compared to those we believe superior.
If boxes are constraining, why do we live in them?
That’s what this site is all about.
The transformation that is necessary to shed the binds of our most constraining boxes.
In these pages, I will share with you tools and techniques to:
- Identify the constraints you are assuming or your boxes are imposing
- Think outside the box, and
- Transform your situation
Literally to unbox oneself.
Many of these lessons apply equally to transforming a team, an organization, or an enterprise.
Why is unboxing yourself so important?
Simple. Some of the boxes we find ourselves in are toxic and severely limiting our potential.
Boxes are used to keep things inside. Safer, we are told.
In a box, we can’t see the entire world outside. We are unable to see further than the light permitted us in our box.
For many, the assumption is that the boxes in which we live or operate are limits we must learn to tolerate. We can dream of better possibilities, but often those are just dreams. We just can’t live in dreams, and our boxes are our reality.
But what if we could come out of that box?
What if we could look back and recognize that we were in a box that didn’t fit us?
What if we could operate without that box? What would the world look like? Where would we go then?
The reality is when we are in a box, we are on a fixed path. So, if you like that path, then OK, stay in your box.
But, if you want to change the direction of your life, your team, your company, you have to change the path. First, you must get out of the constraining box(es).
Think about how we all organise our lives in little boxes – man, woman, British, American, Muslim, Christian, Jew, Tory, Labour, New Labour, Old Labour, up, down – you know, everything in the world. I like red ties, I got a blue shirt on, you laugh about it, think about everything you define yourself by. Our little boxes are important to us. And indeed it is necessary, how could you navigate life if you didn’t know the difference between a child and an adult, an African and an Indian, a scientist and a lawyer? We have to organise that, but somewhere along the way, we finally come to understand that our life is more than all these boxes we’re in. And that if we can’t reach beyond that, we’ll never have a fuller life.
President Bill Clinton: The Struggle for the soul of the 21st Century
The problem for most of us?
We are in boxes, and the instructions to get out are on the outside of the box.
We can’t see a way out when we are stuck in the dark confines of a sealed box.
Someone outside the box could pull us out, who knows we are in a box. That requires a benevolent hand which some of us are fortunate to experience.
But what if no one can see the box you think you are in, and therefore cannot reach in to pull you out?
What if we are in a box, and we don’t even know it? We may not be trying to get out of that box.
Ask yourself, do you put others you know into boxes and then treat them in a limiting way?
- One of my Starbucks Baristas was a Ph.D. student.
- A friend of my brother-in-law that came to help him paint our house was a refugee and former Mayor of a large suburb in Iran.
We put ourselves and others in boxes. That’s convenient and natural. It makes the world easier to handle.
I am in one tribe. I can trust those in my tribe.
You are in another tribe. So I can’t trust you.
How limiting is the box in which we place others?
And, how limiting are the boxes placed on us, in reality, or assumed?
It’s fair to say that many of the boxes we assume, or limits they impose on us, are limits that must be broken.
And when those limits are broken, the potential is unlocked.
My promise to you is that only by unboxing yourself, thinking differently, and following a transformational path will you be able to realize your full potential.
Let’s get you started on that journey to the better you!
Begin discovering your transformation
- Find out whether you are a pessimist or an optimist. It changes the way you see the world. Start here to evaluate your pessimism/optimism
- Follow the link to my thoughts on transformation.
- Help me help you, let me know where you need more guidane or even if you think I am on the wrong track, and let’s have a vigorous debate.
- I will be adding new material regularly. Join my email list so that you would be the first to know when I post updates or new thought starters.
- Share with your friends.
Here is a link to all my work: My Blog on Shivamber.Com