​ *In my Mufasa voice* Look Simba, everything the light touches is our kingdom. I felt like I needed to start off with this for two reasons. One The Lion King is one of the most iconic movies ever and recently released the live action version. Two in the live action version Simba says that his father told him to protect everything the light touches. Because I love using analogies and examples, The light for today is vision.
 
Vision is the state of being able to see and to visualize is to imagine. Vision is ultimately the framework and foundation for our lives. Having vision and being able to see are two different things. Vision gives what you see feet. Vision takes what you see and makes it more. You have to consistently cultivate an authentic relationship with your vision. A lot of us have been reckless with our vision and have not protected it properly. We have been educated with restrictions and limitations and wonder why thinking outside the box is so hard. Thinking outside the box is still limited thinking. (Please refer back to my previous article “Don’t Think Outside the Box”). I’m learning to become more intentional about my vision and aligning (positioning) myself with the vision that I have so that it influences every part of my life.
 
I believe that people are racing to become wealthy without first having vision and secondly not being committed and persistent to that vision. Time can be your friend if you aren’t wasting it. Time can be beneficial in order to allow time to build something that is bigger than you. People are not willing to build on wins over time (whether big or small). People would rather get rich quickly and hurt themselves in the process because they have no vision for their success. The problem is that we set these cute goals, reach the goals, and pat ourselves on the back for doing something that took no effort. Again, it’s cute but when we are dealing with vision we shouldn’t be setting goals based on what we think we can do; we should set our goals based upon how far our vision can take us. Mediocre vision (and goal setting) always disappoints the person who has the potential to be more because having average goals always leaves the person unfulfilled. This is why it’s so important to protect your vision so that it isn’t diminished to just seeing. 

​GOALS or IDOLS
 
Goals (inserts typewriter noise), as defined by dictionary.com, is the object of a person's ambition or effort; an aim or desired result. Everyone’s goals differ depending on who you are and what stage you are at in life currently. In society today we often refer to many types of goals such as hair goals (whether you’re 1A or 4C I’m here for all types of hair), relationships goals (usually you hear Beyonce and Jay-Z as a top pick but I’m going to throw in Chrissy Teigen and John Legend because their one of my personal favorites), money goals (whether you want to be as rich as Oprah Winfrey, Bill Gates or just to have a savings account, and life goals (Retired at 40, married with kids and the house)
We look to these things and people because we deem it or them as worthy of respect and regard it as impressive aka admiration. Once this admiration or love towards a person or thing it becomes excessive we often idolize people or things without even realizing it. We fixate on other people’s successes and “perceived” (I put that in quotes purposely because social media has a great way of making momentary events people's everyday lives.) lifestyles and make them our goals rather than studying the process of how they got to certain points of success and applying it to our personal lives. In order to be successful in any process you have to apply the principle to your current situation. We all come from different backgrounds, teaching and environments. Picture this for a moment, we are all cookies that have the potential to taste great once all of the ingredients are added and we bake in the oven. No one cookie (person) is the same but all of the same ingredients (principles, life lessons, keys to success) are needed to make a great cookie. Based on your background, previous experiences, etc. some of us have a little bit more flour than others or even less chocolate chips than others. So taking one ingredient (principle) and adding it to the cookie (person) without evaluating and applying it to  what the cookie already has  can be a set up for failure and a bad tasting cookie (but back to the main point because now i want some chocolate chip cookies).
Admiring people and wanting to reach the same level as success as a person is not a bad thing and having great examples in front of you to encourage you to pursue your goals and dreams is a great thing. But to idolize a person or concept can become a false notion or fallacy. (Peep the SAT vocabulary here. Please look this word up in your spare time if you don’t know the definition) Some people think that success is overnight, which it can be, but any real overnight success would tell you that overnight successes are rarely overnight. They’ve been working hard in the shadows for a while and are just receiving the recognition. One of the downfalls of people trying to skip the process to success (Side note: success is whatever success means to you. It looks different for everyone) is that impatience causes us to arrive places premature (and immaturely ) as well as unprepared because we skipped the process and the lessons that come along with it (such as discipline, patience and perseverance) that allows us to maintain success once achieving it.
So all of this to say the process of success is more important than the end goal of success and that we often create idols of people who have reached certain levels of success and call it “goals” rather than learning the process and applying it to our everyday life. So next time your eating chocolate cookies and you taste a cookie that probably was missing a little something or just quite didn’t meet your expectations think of this post.

​“Think outside the box”, is one of the most common phrases used in order to try to spark  creative thinking. My hope today is to get our thinking past this phrase and to just think creatively without parameters. And essentially give my argument as to why I strongly dislike( I don’t want to use the word hate but this is up there on the list.) this phrase in the scope of creative thinking.

The “box” is a metaphor used in the phrase to represent our thinking.The “box” represents multiple things from the perspective of creativity.
The “box” represents:
1.Limitations
2.Barriers
3.What’s already been done and essentially anything that’s not considered creative.

The “box” is supposed to be the thing that we above or outside of. But in my opinion the box is a figment of your imagination. Why does it even have to exist? Here are 3 reasons as to why this phrase doesn’t work.
1.You acknowledge the fact that there are limitations
​a.When you acknowledge limitations you’re more likely to focus on them. (what you focus on expands)
2.It contradicts itself.
a.The phrase wants you to think creatively but acknowledges that there are limitations on creativity or that there is a certain level your thinking must reach in order to be creative.
3.We essentially put our creativity in comparison to what has already been. (With the exception of copying someone's idea. Copy=replicate=identical)
​a.There is nothing wrong with being inspired by someone’s idea and putting your own flare on it. (Just give props! Please!!)

​I think for a long time the standard of trying to spark creative thinking has been to tell people to think outside the box. But what I don’t think people realize is that when we do that we diminish creativity that doesn’t meet our expectation. We have essentially said that if it doesn’t meet our standard it somehow falls into this “box” and then we are expected to rise (or think) above it. I believe getting rid of the “box” will allow for more creative thoughts to flow without the pressure of feeling like it has to be outside of the “box”.