Thinking Outside The Box - How Do I Get Outside The Box?

My wife had a pretty little turquoise and silver bracelet. After wearing it one day she discovered she couldn't get it off. It was stuck and the clasp wouldn't budge. Calling on my vast experience as a fixer of broken things, she asked me to unstick it. I failed. She wore it to bed that night. She didn't sleep well - the bracelet was just tight enough to be irritating. The next morning she declared it had to come off. We looked at it - we both tried to get the clasp to work - to no avail. It wasn't so valuable that we should take it to a jeweler. That damn clasp just wouldn't move. We ended up cutting it off with a bolt cutters. And as soon as we did, the part of the bracelet that we thought was the hinge fell off - and we discovered we had been trying to open the wrong end of the clasp!

Have you ever done something like that? Have you ever zeroed in on something and just had to act based on what you saw - and later discovered that there were other ways to deal with the issue? Is that thinking in the box? I think so.

Another example. We use a picture in our seminars that illustrates how differently the same object can be viewed by two people. The picture is a black and white drawing of an old woman - or a young woman - or both an old and a young woman, depending on how you see it. In my experience, when first shown the picture, about half see the young woman, and about half see the old woman. Very few see both women in the picture. (Send me a request through "comments" with your E mail address and I will send you a copy of the picture). And once people have "locked in" on a particular view, it is very difficult for them to see the other woman, even after they are told she is in the picture. It is only after carefully pointing out the different outlines that people begin to see the other picture - the one they did not see originally. Once again, we get so locked in on that first impression that we find it hard to see any other view.

How do we overcome that very human behavior? It's easy to say "Think outside the box" - but how do we do it?

I suggest the very best way to think outside your box is to think inside some else's. How do you do that? Going back to the young lady/old lady exercise: when one person says they see an old lady, and another says they see a young lady, rather than insist on the rightness of their own personal observations, the effective people share information, struggle through their own first impression, and come to a broader interpretation of the picture. That's getting in someone else's box, and letting them get in yours. The payoff - more possibilities, better information, and personal growth.

The essential attributes to think outside the box are: communication skills - particularly listening, being open to changing your position when that makes sense, developing relationships with others that allow an interchange of information, and a real respect for the values of others. It takes the wilingness to use the most feared words in many people's vocabulary - "What do you think?"

If you are looking for a powerful way to ijncrease your personal effectiveness, this may be it. Try it!