Thinking outside the box

Thinking outside the box - how revolutionary? How fashionable?

Wait a minute! Which box?

Is every way of thinking outside of any old box all right?

Or are there special boxes we must avoid, in order to fit into the new ones?

And what's the cost of fitting well into the new, revolutionary, fashionable, out-of-the-box boxes?

Psychologist Martin Seligman wrote of research with dogs who each were confined in a box in which they received electric shocks. After a time of such experience, most of the dogs stopped trying to get away. They learned that they were helpless to avoid shocks, helpless to create another reality for themselves. Learned helplessness. When the dogs who had learned they were helpless were put in a situation where they could escape from the electric shocks, they no longer tried to escape. They had learned that their actions were pointless.

Learned helplessness became a model for depression.

But it applies in lots of situations.

How many times do we find ourselves in situations where we can't (fill in the blank)? We know we can't. We haven't been able to before. We tried. It didn't work.

Maybe we just need to get out of the dang box, and think any which way we want.