What’s new with me & my own

 Written by MacDaniel Reynolds

Sometimes you can’t see the ‘box’ you’re in, and need just a nudge from the outside.

Tammy was rocking through the black diamond route on a challenging aerial ropes course, feeling all American Ninja Warrior, when she got stuck.  She was hanging on to a knot on a rope, fifty feet in the air, trying to get one of her feet into the loop at the bottom of that rope. But the loop kept moving.  Her arms started to give out.  That’s when the panic kicked her logic brain out of the way and took over.

She called out for help, but nobody seemed to hear—then she started to yell, dropping f-bombs like raindrops—until finally, FINALLY, someone on the ground heard her.  The guy in charge yelled that he’d send someone to help, but nobody was moving very fast—did these people not realize how dire a situation she was in, how badly she needed help NOW before she lost her grip and fell?

Then calmly, the man told her “just lean back.”  For a moment, she thought he was crazy—leaning back would be even harder on her tired arms; how would  that help?  Then she heard him say “trust your harness” and she instantly remembered that she was wearing a harness, tied into a safety wire.  She leaned back, her harness held, and her logic brain took back over.  She took a few deep breaths, shook her arms out, and then finished the course.

‘Think outside the box’ is easy to say, but when you’re inside the ‘box,’ it isn’t always easy to do.  In Tammy’s extreme example, in her intense focus on trying to     survive, she missed an obvious solution, and it took someone outside her ‘box’ to point that out.  Though hopefully less dramatic, each of us have ‘boxes’ that control our thought processes.  That means each of us also have blind spots that overlook potential solutions to life’s challenges.

And, that highlights how truly important it is to find someone you trust, a coach, counselor, friend or family member, to help you see outside your own box when you feel like life has you in a corner—the solution is always there. Sometimes you just need help seeing it.

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