INSIDE & OUTSIDE THE BOX

If you have heard it once, I bet you have heard it dozens if not hundreds of times, “You’ve got to think outside of the box.” We say things like that to encourage creativity and to enable a client to not get stuck in an old way of thinking which cannot solve the problem. Question — What is this box? Where is it? How can you tell what’s inside it and how can you enable someone to think outside the box?

What is it? The box is your mental model of the world, your conceptual maps about yourself, others, work, home, life, etc. The box is made up of all of the multiple ways that you think, both consciously and unconsciously. It is made up of all of the images, sounds, and sensations (VAK) that you re-present to yourself in your mind from what you have seen, heard, and felt. It is made up of empirical facts and subjective observations. Here are a person’s experiences (states) and then, above and beyond all of that information, is the person’s conclusions by which he has invented the meanings of things (beliefs, values, decisions, permissions, understandings, assumptions, etc.).