Thinking Outside the Box and Coloring Between the Lines

When I was in first grade, I vividly remember coming home with my first bad grade, complete with red marks from my teacher.  My mom sat with me and we went over the worksheet in an effort to try and figure out the disconnect. As I sat with my mom, I explained how I approached the problem and why I’d answered the way I did.  The more we talked, the more we both realized that my answers weren’t wrong; they were just different. They just weren’t the ones in the teacher’s manual.  

I was lucky to have parents who cared about what I was learning and more importantly cared enough to teach me how to advocate for myself.  My mom scheduled an appointment with my teacher and we went in to talk to him together. My mom asked me to explain to Mr. Thompson what I’d explained to her.  

He was quiet for a bit and then did something that quickly made him one of my favorite teachers.  Decades later his response framed how I approached teaching myself. He encouraged me to continue thinking like that.  Even though it meant more work for him, he recognized that I was ready for more and differentiated my learning before that was even a thing.  

Since then, I’ve always considered myself as a pretty ‘out of the box thinker’.  I knew I thought differently and that would mean more conferences like the one I had in first grade throughout my entire school career.  I often had to present my case or clarify my understanding because I just looked at things differently.  

While that makes me sound pretty ‘out of the box,’ there’s a lot about my life that contradicts that.  I love a good list, with items that I can cross off. I like to organize things or build processes and procedures that make work flow more efficiently – whether it’s a process at work, or the way I approach feeding my family.   While I hate a formal outline, I love a good list of bulleted information. I thrive when I can collect ideas in a mind map, but it’s definitely going to be organized and color coded.

So I’m not really sure what that makes me – out of the box, or in between the lines.  Maybe that definition is irrelevant.

What I’ve noticed, especially in the last few years, is that most of us feel like we’re the only person who is a certain way, when in fact most of us are very similar.  I might feel like I’m the only one who thinks of herself as an ‘out of the box thinker,’ but manifests as someone who likes things in ‘pretty little boxes’, when in fact many of the people I surround myself feel the same way.  

The truth is, most of us share similar behaviors, similar strengths, and similar insecurities.  They just come in different combinations. My particular combination of ‘out of the box’ and ‘in between the lines’ just makes me uniquely me. 

I was reminded of this uniqueness today, when I did a “big thing” for me.  I asked for help. It was a process. I actually had to “make an appointment” with my own husband in order to ask for help.  It wasn’t that Ziggy required that appointment, it was that I did.  

It wasn’t that I was so busy, that I had to “schedule” him in, although that does happen from time to time.  It was simply that I needed the structure of the appointment in order to feel okay with asking for help.

For quite a while now, I’ve been wrestling with what’s next.  What do I want to be in this next phase of my life? How do I want to represent myself?  What contribution can I make? In what way can I add meaning for myself and others?

I have some pretty big, hairy, audacious goals that have been floating around in my head for a while now that would answer a lot of those questions, but BHAGs are both exciting and scary.  They require that I push myself in different ways. They require that I ask for help.

Beyond being someone who thinks about things a bit differently, I’ve also always been someone who prides herself on “figuring it out”.  In many ways, life has come easily for me. When things get hard or a new skill is needed, I’m the first one to roll up my sleeves and dig in.  Here’s the thing, though, I roll up my sleeves and dig in – teaching myself, doing it myself, trudging through the mud and the muck to prove it to myself that I can do it – whatever “it” is.  

While this is a trait that has served me well over the years, it has also stood in my way.  There have been times when simply raising my hand, admitting that I don’t know how to do something, asking for help and then learning from someone who does know, would have taken a fraction of the time.  It would have allowed me to just roll up my sleeves, but maybe avoid the mud and the muck, while learning the skill, concept, or process. Still, I avoid raising my hand at all costs.  

As I’ve been mulling over these goals and ideas, and taking into account the ways I’ve intentionally been working on myself, I realized I need to raise my hand no matter how uncomfortable it made me.  I need to ask for help. And so, I put on my ‘inside the lines’ hat and scheduled an appointment.  

None of my goals or ideas came as a surprise to Ziggy.  They are all things I’ve mentioned or hashed out with him before, but for the first time I posed some of it as questions.  I told Ziggy I need to consult with him, not as my husband, but as someone who understands business and more importantly understands how I work, what makes me tick, and what paralyzes me.  

So we sat down and talked about what it would take for me to really write a book and get more involved in speaking.  We talked about things I’d learned and what deadlines I might put on it. We talked about how I could carve out time for all the important aspects of my life including coffee with friends, hockey games, and working out.  We talked about the responsibilities that are important for me to uphold including building and growing Rylie’s ARK, growing professionally, and working at a job that not only comes with a paycheck, but that also breathes life into me.

We talked about what I’ve learned over the years in the corporate world, the new things I’ve been learning about being an entrepreneur, and the hang ups I have about anything that involves numbers.  You see, I came to Ziggy to ask for help with the numbers side of things. Everything I know to be true about business means that I should be quantifying my goals in numbers, especially financial ones.  It means I should be thinking about the products, services and experiences in my “business” and figuring out how to monetize them.  

That’s where I started our time together, and that’s where Ziggy stopped me.  I’m so grateful for his holistic approach to counseling me. While these are all very important aspects of a good business and ones that I will need to tackle at some point, he also knows that I am not motivated by them.  I’m motivated by impact, by story, by relationship, by authenticity. He recognized that in order to reach my dream of publishing a book that could inspire others to overcome challenges, build relationships, and connect through story, I need to stay focused on that and only that.  

The more we talked, the more I came to see the ‘outside the box’ and ‘in between the lines’ duality of my personality.  Yes, I think and dream big. Yes, I like to approach a challenge from a variety of angles. But I also, need structure. I need to set a timeline or a deliverable.  I need to cross it off my list.  

I also need to put my dreams out there – to say them aloud so that I can give myself permission to work on them. I may dream big, but I need permission to color outside of the lines.  

For whatever reason, I have to say that I have a business of my own.  I have to say that one aspect of that company will be focused on encouraging and engaging others through my words.  I have to do those things in order to feel that I am allowed to focus my time on it. It’s ridiculous. It’s self-imposed. It is also true.

I needed Ziggy to shine a light on the ways that I was approaching everything about this crazy goal from my very structured ‘in between the lines’ rule following nature.  I needed to be reminded of my first grade self – who thought about things from a different angle or pushed the limits on what could be considered “right”. At his encouragement, I set aside the need to quantify my goal or think about the financial impact, and I set out to dream big – following my heart.

And so here I am, putting it out in the world… I am writing a book.  I’m going to share my story, authentically – braving the elements of shame or judgement in an effort to remind others that we’re really not all that different, inviting others to share their stories so that we may learn from and alongside each other.