16 boxes

I love this particular blog post by Seth Godin that he wrote more than a year ago. Its titled 16 boxes and he talks about how our career or business is not a single entity but is made up of so many different parts (that he refers to as boxes). I have always read this post when I am low so I thought I share it with you all as well.

I feel that just like our career or business, even our life is made up of several different interconnected parts. We have our health, wealth, family, job, children, friends, career aspirations, social circles, ambitions etc. These could all be titled as different boxes that make up our life. Now at any moment, not all boxes may be doing good at the same time. Things might be going wrong in some aspects. But life is not a boat which needs no leaks to float. Even if one of our boxes aren’t doing well, our entire life is not gonna sink. We can still sail around.

But when things actually go wrong, we always focus only on the boxes where things are going bad. We don’t even bother about all the other good boxes that we have in our life. I read somewhere that our primal instincts make us focus on things that are wrong, because when we as a species were still in the jungle hunting for food, not having something right was a matter of survival. However, today that’s not the case. We as a species however have not yet evolved to ignore things which are not in our control. We still continue to worry about the things that are going wrong and many a times end up affecting the other boxes which are perfectly normal till then. So next time when things go wrong with you, try thinking about all the other boxes in your life that are perfectly normal and don’t just focus on what is wrong with your life!