Pushing yourself out of your comfort zone can be a path to new insights and creativity.
I remember in a ballroom dance class trying to learn the basic box-step of the foxtrot. I was awkward because I was focusing on the steps, not the rhythm; counting steps and not feeling the music. Once I switched from counting to listening, the dance improved.
Do you remember that scene in Dead Poets Society when Robin Williams, as English teacher, spun the shy student until he was disoriented and he blurted out his creative lines? Sometimes we need to put ourselves in that disoriented position precisely so we lose the orientation that is holding us back.
A good friend and colleague, James Mapes, uses hypnosis to illustrate this point for corporate audiences. Once hypnotized, he tells the subject that there is an invisible box surrounding her. He then holds up a handful of $100 bills and asks if she wants it? Is she motivated? Yes! He then drops the hundreds one at a time around the invisible box border. The subject tries and tries, but cannot reach them. The box is in their mind; they are a victim of their own orientation.
There are three examples of getting stuck in your box. I leave you with this delightful quote from Gordon MacKenzie of Hallmark Cards:
"On a dance floor, people are not boxed in, and they manage very nicely to avoid tripping over one another. If we are to achieve the quantum leaps the future seems to be demanding of us, we must risk to leave our containers-turned-cages and find the grace to dance without stepping on toes."[1]
And he said this in response to the need for job descriptions! |