Spread love everywhere you go. Let no one ever come without leaving happier.

 

 Beyond Boxes

I've always felt like my life was divided into boxes. Work, family, career, hobbies. At times they seemed to be full with all of the activities I had going on in each one; and at other times they felt like they were empty and I was just spinning my wheels with no direction.

But recently, I've come to the realization that this feeling of being trapped inside the boundaries of these boxes is not just how it feels for me - it's how life feels for a lot of people out there - so many that it's become a common problem for writers to write about! But as you can see too often these stories end without any answers or solutions. So that's what I'm going to try to do here. Give you some ideas, strategies and methods for breaking out of the boxes that your life seems to be in.

I'm going to start with a personal story about how I broke out of my own box and then go onto some more generalized tips at the end.

I've always been a hard worker, but somewhere in my mid-20's it became too much. I would get up at 6am every morning and work until at least 8pm most nights on the worst kinds of projects: overly complicated website designs that were supposed to appeal to everyone and no one, brochures with hundreds of pages (that nobody actually read), complex corporate reports that nobody read anyway...you know that kind of thing.

I felt like I was working as hard as I could and was getting nowhere. In fact, sometimes I'd look back at my "box" of life and wonder what it was all for. Did people really care about this stuff? Did it even matter to anyone other than me? I couldn't see the point.

But there was no easy way out. It wasn't as if I hated my job; in fact, most weeks I would find something to be excited about and it kept me coming back every day despite the huge pile of work that always seemed to loom over me like a dark cloud telling me where my life was going.

Then one day I had an "aha" moment. I realized that my job was the problem. Literally, the outdated methods and tools that I was using to build these websites and reports were just getting in my way. It was like trying to create a work of art with a paintbrush when you're used to spray painting on walls. The techniques just didn't apply; they didn't work any more.

I knew there had to be better ways, I just wasn't sure where to start looking or what I would find when I did. So, I decided to start at the beginning - with my job. I considered what it was I was doing, how I did it and why I was doing it the way that I was. Then everything changed.

It's hard to describe the "aha" moment when you first realize you need a change. It feels like you are about to get sick or something - but also like nothing in your life has ever been better...it's a strange feeling but one that doesn't go away and often results in giant leaps of clarity that result in huge changes for the better. In my case, it forced me to stop and think about how I got stuck in a box in the first place.

Conclusion:

(From a book called "The Dragonfly Effect" by the guy who wrote it, Ed Hall)

You will never get out of your box until you realize that:

"The reason I'm in a box is that I'm not doing anything differently than what everyone else is doing." This means that as long as you are continuing to act and think like everyone else, you will always stay in the same box. "Re-think everything that I do. If it's not working, then change it. If it's working, then do something different."  Your work life "box" is usually built on outdated methods and tools.