HOW BIG IS YOUR BOX?

 

How big is your box?  “What box do you ask?” 

The one in which you live “My house?” 

No, no, no.  The place in which you conduct your life; The place where your essence resides;  The place where you keep your values, your needs, your desires, your family, your friends, your life.

 

Of course it’s not a physical place.  It’s the place in your mind where you live.

 

Early in life as we begin to construct our boxes, we get take our lead from our parents and family.  What you like, what you don’t like, what you do, who you do it with, how you do it are all things that we decide and we have decided for us. As we grow and expand our realm, our church and our friends place their lines down.  As time goes on, we begin to add our own walls and sides and tops and corners and nooks and crannies.  We make this space our own.  We have to, we live there……..But how much of this space is of our own making?

 

Does your box fit you well?  Is there enough room for you to grow as a person?  Room to add more of your own life experiences?  Is it so tight that new thoughts or ideas have no place to rest?  Or is it so big that you feel lost and alone with no connection to world?

 

Does your box help keep you balanced and moving smoothly through each day? Or are your lines placed in such a way that you keep tripping over them as you try to find happiness in this world?  Are there things you “can’t” do or “must” do just because it is or is not the way “things are supposed to be?”  Is you existence limited by this?  If you’re happy and fulfilled then it’s not a problem.  Your box fits you well.  But, if you’re not……

 

Why not?

 

You’re not happy with the box you’re in?  Change it.  The lines we chose to live by are our own.  Is one of your lines in your way? Move it.  You can of course because it’s yours.  It’s not your mothers or your fathers or your pastors or your friends.  You own it.  You can move it.  You can make it better or worse.

 

Everyday people wound themselves by running into the structures they have placed in their own way.  Living in spaces created by others for their own purposes. Then refusing to move the walls of their “box” beyond these limits, which may be fine for those who have created them, but which limit their own potential. 

 

Why you ask?

 

Many do not recognize that their life and therefore their “lines” are their own.  For many it is far easier to do “what is expected” than it is to explore their own heart and mind to find what it is that will make them truly happy.  Some are fearful that others will disapprove of what they are attempting.  Afraid that if they try they will cross someone else’s “line” or break someone else’s rule.  They feel this way regardless of whether this rule or this “line” works for them or against them.

 

And what if they fail?  What if they try to do something outside the bounds of what is expected and they don’t get the desired result?  For some the spectacle of having failed while venturing on ones own is indeed frightening.  It is far less risky to fail while following someone else’s path.  For then it’s not really our fault……..Or isn’t it?

 

That is an interesting perspective for if we limit our responsibility for our failure then haven’t we also limited our potential for our own success? 

 

Our lives are really our own.  We must own them.  We can’t delegate that authority.  We must shape our own box.

 

How big is your box?

 

 

Rick