I moved about 5 years ago. I was moving in with my fiancé. She had years of boxes and stuff that she had accumulated over a 23 year marriage. I had a 2300 square foot house full of things that I needed to condense, consolidate, pack, give away or throw out.
As I was packing, I moved boxes that had been moved and stored for decades. Other new items were placed in boxes and labeled and moved to a storage unit until we could figure out what we could keep and what needed to go away.
We gave a lot of things to our kids, had a huge garage sale and kept all that we had room for. Much of what we kept remained in unexamined boxes.
Last night, in a coaching group, I realized that we all have mental boxes too. Over our lifetime we pack away ideas and concepts that seem right and make sense in the moment. We accept these ideas as true and pack them away, labeling the boxes. Storing these ideas and concepts is a great way to save time and energy later.
Let's say you are in a conversation with someone about religion. Rather than having to think about religion, you can just refer to the box. That way you don't have to re-examine what you put in there in the first place. Easy. Convenient. Predictable.
And limiting. The older I get, the more I experience, the greater the gap between what I accepted as true and valid when I packed my boxes and what is true and valid for me today. But I will continue to react to life as if what's in the mental box is accurate and true until I open the box and, one thought at a time, begin to unpack it.
As I have done this on boxes labeled, "marriage", "friendship", "money", "God", "Fatherhood" and countless others, I have reclaimed power and aligned my values to what is important to me today.
What's in your box? Who would you be if you unpacked it and decided, one concept at a time if the contents match your current values and beliefs?
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