Last updated on March 31st, 2021 at 05:07 pm
Riding the train into work faced with a detour as one of the stations in my path had been hit by a power outage. The trio of teenage girls behind me that kept bumping into me as they couldnāt seem to keep their balance in the sardine can. And the guy I had to move away (as far away) from (as possible) because he reeked of urineāat least I think it was urine…
Thereās gotta be an easier way than thisā¦
I think part of the reason that weāre so miserable as a whole is that weāve grown accustomed to living in boxes. Some of these boxes are a little more obvious, like apartments and condos that barely fit your bed, or the cars we spend more time in than what might be healthy as we faced gridlocked traffic day after day after day.
But then you have the boxes thatāre harder to seeāsuch as keeping people around us who bring us down rather than propel us forward in life. Or perhaps feeling stuck in a job that we donāt love despite our efforts to find new employment. Thereāre always boxesāthe trick to being in control of your life is knowing how to think outside of them.
A box is anything that can be used to contain something else. In the context of our lives, this could be our freedoms, our creativity, our opinions and thoughtsāwe can be contained in just about any way conceivable. and thereāre enough people out there whoāll box us in ā knowingly or unknowinglyāso we must be able to identify these boxes before they trap us in, the lid sealing shut behind us.
HOW TO TELL IF YOUāRE TRAPPED IN A BOX
- Do you feel constantly frustrated with life?
- Are you often tired or dispassionate?
- Are you unable to see a bright future for yourself?
- Have you tried to do something multiple times, only to have it fail on each and every attempt?
- Is your first mode of communication usually sarcasm?
- Do you often envy others rather than be happy for their successes?
If any of these sounds like you, youāre very likely trapped in a box.
So if youāre in a box that you donāt want to be in, what do you do?
HOW TO BREAK OUT FROM BOXES IN 5 EASY STEPS
1: Recognize the bounds of the box thatās trapped you
Like any good recovery program in rehab, you canāt escape the box if you donāt know what it looks like. Youāll need to think long and hard on thisāthe boxes of which we speak do not have a physical location, and boxes can contain other lesser boxes.
Going back to that job example, if youāre constantly getting turned down for promotions, you might be quick to blame it on rotten, unfair work culture. Maybe thatās true. But what might be a bigger problem may be something about you thatās turning potential employers off. Maybe an attitude toward work or cockiness that presents itself in interviews. The work culture would only be a smaller box within the box of your personal problems.
2: Tell yourself what you plan to do to escape the box
Now that you can āseeā the box, itās time to plan how to escape it. The best way to destroy a box of unknown size is to fill it with something that you know for sure is bigger than any box could be. If you havenāt guessed what it is, itās your hopes. Your dreams. Your ambitions. When you were a kid, you convinced yourself that absolutely anything was possible. Itās time again to access that inner child so they can help you out of this mess youāve gotten yourself into. Dare to dream with the hope to be free!
3: ACT.
This right here is most peopleās stumbling blockāacting on all the ideas theyāve thought up of what their ideal life looks like. Weāre afraid to take risks. Frightened of uncertainty. Worried about the impacts that our actions will have. In the Bible, God tells us not to worry, because heās got our backs, so we should do the good things we plan to do without stressing over failure. (Yes, Iām paraphrasing.) Even if youāre not Christian, Iād suggest worrying less about the good ideas you have and just do them. If your plan doesnāt
- take the food out of someone elseās mouth
- put anyone in the way of harm, or
- put you in danger of winding up in the slammer
then you at least owe it to yourself to try. And if you do fail, the regret of never having tried is one less regret you can bear on your shoulders!
4: Learn your lesson!
Iām sure weāve all experienced this at one timeāgetting something done, thinking that youāve gotten it out of the way, only to have it come back and haunt you down the road. Much of the time this is because there was a lesson to be learned and it didnāt sink ināso, you wound up making the same mistakes all over again! You need to learn well from all that you had to do to make your way out of the box, and promise yourself that you wonāt make the same mistakes twice. Once you know the trick to avoiding being your own worst enemy, it becomes far easier to apply the same thinking to defeating other challenges that may pop up in life!
5: Show others the way!
But figuring your own way out of the box isnāt enoughāso many people across the globe are trapped in boxes; theyāre constantly trying to find their way out to make themselves whole. To make themselves better. To make themselves happy. If youāve found a way out, Iād argue that itās your responsibility to help others do the same. If we can all get out of our boxes and figure out what it is that weāre actually supposed to do with our lives, I figure the world will be overall better for it.
So the next time you feel like you canāt breathe; the next time you feel like the walls are closing in and you donāt know what to do, heed these words, because itās very likely that they are. Remember the five steps, and remember that you can beat the box. Because no matter how you seal it, what goes in can always come out.
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