If everyone is thinking alike, then somebody isn’t thinking - George Smith Patton, Jr.

“Thinking outside of the box” is a phrase used to denote unorthodox or unconventional thinking. It also connotes thinking creatively or differently. 

Having a lasting impact on civilization, generations, and to realize your dreams requires thinking outside of the box and a shift in paradigm.

Our societies and world have been driven by thinkers: people who think and see beyond present socio-political and economical situations. Thinking outside of the box also means unusually thinking and out -of-the-world thinking.

See, convention never makes room for invention. Convention (i.e. the acceptable way of doing things) builds monuments out of success but to “think outside of the box,” you have to keep on changing, learning, growing, stretching, reaching, and push beyond the status quo or accepted norms. Hence, decide to think differently in spite of the struggles, hardship, and constraints you may be facing.

When a person, a people, a nation, or generation refuse to think outside of the box, they implicitly relinquish their ability to control their future and posterity to come because someone else would think for them and decide their destiny .

American industrialist, the founder of the Ford Motor Company, Henry Ford opined “Thinking is the hardest work there is, which is probably the reason so few people engage in it.”

Florence Nightingale, the Pioneer and mother of Modern Nursing, made an indelible impact on the history of humanity by thinking outside the box at a very crucial moment.

When her country was in dire need of a creative thinker in the field of medical care and hygiene, Florence, who was from a rich, well-connected, upper-class British family, was inspired by what she termed ‘the call of God’ to practice nursing as the medium of influencing and serving mankind.

This decision attracted the fierce anger and displeasure of her family, more especially her sister and mother, due to the fact that she was breaking out of the expected role for a woman of her status, which was to become a stay-home mother and a wife. Despite the resistance from her family and the restrictive societal code for affluent young English women, Florence persisted to educate herself in the art and science of Nursing. Even at one point in her life, a politician and poet Richard Monckton Milnes courted Florence for marriage but she rejected the proposal, saying the marriage would hamper her divine calling to nursing.

In 1853, Britain and France formed an allied force to defend Turkey from the Russian invasion, a big conflict known which came to be known as the Crimean War. British soldiers were contracting malaria and cholera infections not long after their arrival in Turkey, and in a matter of weeks, over 8,000 men were suffering from these two diseases. The entire British Army was in crisis. Mary Seacole, a medical practitioner from Kingston, Jamaica with a Scottish father and a black Jamaican mother who also had special skills in herbal medicine, travelled to London to offer her skill and knowledge to the British Army when she heard about the cholera epidemic.

 The British Army out of their narrow-mindedness for women’s involvement in medicine rejected Mary Seacole’s offer even though they had exhausted their expertise and the situation was becoming catastrophic. In the meantime, the epidemic was taking the lives of the soldiers than the enemy. Out of the 21,000 soldiers who died, only 3,000 died from injuries which happened during battle. Consequently, the Times newspaper published that a large number of British soldiers were dying from cholera and the public became alarmed and outraged.

In the campaign to contain the situation, the British government sent teams of nurses to help in the combat zone. Florence Nightingale was therefore selected to lead a team of thirty-nine nurses to care for the sick soldiers even though she had practically no experience dealing with cholera. Upon their arrival, Florence and her team of nurses discovered that the men were kept in rooms without blankets or decent food. They were unwashed and were still wearing their army uniforms which were “stiff with dirt and gore.”

The temporary barracks hospital was in a very bad condition, overcrowded with patients and lack of ventilation. Diseases such as typhus, cholera and dysentery were the main reasons why the death rate was so high among some of the wounded soldiers. Military officers and doctors strongly objected to Nightingale’s paradigm of reforming the modus operandi and procedures at military hospitals since they were considering her perspective as a threat to their professionalism. Hence, they made Florence’s life miserable in carrying out her assignment until she contacted the Times newspaper to report on the appalling conditions of the military hospitals and detailing the manner in which British Army wounded soldiers were treated. It was after this publication that Florence was given the go-ahead by the British government to organize the barracks hospitals of the British Army thereby improving the quality of the sanitation and as a result reduced the death rate considerably among the soldiers. It’s been said that Florence, through her “thinking outside of the box”, reduced the death rate from 42% to 2% by making improvements in hygiene and subsequently called on the Sanitary Commission to assist her.

Oftentimes, people who have no solutions or ideas to offer would scornfully  object to any shift in paradigm you propose, not because it is meaningless or complicated but simply out of personal ego, envy, insecurity, and protection of traditions. "The trouble with most people is that they think with their hopes or fears or wishesrather than with their minds," says William James, American writer, historian, and philosopher.

Have you noticed that usually what worked effectively yesterday would already be obsolete today? In the same vein, what you deem splendid and revolutionary today may become irrelevant tomorrow because nothing fails like success. The success you are celebrating today may be outdated tomorrow. Edward de Bono believed, “Traditional thinking is all about ‘what is’; Future [outside of the box] thinking will also need to be about what can be.”

The following are few tips to assist you to “think outside of the box”:

1.Expect change- American botanist, and pioneer in agricultural science, Luther Burbank said , "It is well for people who think,to change their minds occasionally in order to keep them clean."Anticipating change is the hallmark of great thinkers and to think outside of the box is to plan for change.  The 35th President of the United States of America, John F. Kennedy argues that, "Change is the law of life. And those who look only to the past or present are certain to miss the future."

2.Embrace Change- One of the awkward scenarios of life is to see individuals who were considered powerful, influential , or wealthy but refused to accept change and as a result are relegated to the back bench  in the game of life.   English naturalist and geologist, best known for his contributions to evolutionary theory, Charles Darwin believed that, "It is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change."

3.Ride on change- The future belongs to those who cease the opportunity to ride on the wave of change to start a business, implement an idea, or lead a worthy cause . "Progress is impossible without change, and those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything," according  to Irish playwright, George Bernard Shaw.

4.Shift Your Paradigm – German-born theoretical physicist, thinker, and Nobel Prize winner, Albert Einstein argued that, “The significant problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them.” We can’t solve the problems facing us today with the paradigms of yesterday. Unraveling today’s issues requires futuristic thinking, a change in worldview and attitude. A person, organization, or nation can’t be changed significantly until there is a complete change in their paradigms and attitude.

5.Be Creative – Creativity is the ability to think differently from everyone else. American soldier and author, George S. Patton purported that, “If everyone is thinking alike, then somebody isn’t thinking.” Your greatness in life is in your ability to think differently from everyone else. Hence, think differently.

6.Be Innovative – Innovation is the skill of doing things differently from what everybody else is doing. Steve Jobs said, “Innovation distinguishes between a leader and a follower.” Doing things differently is what separates leaders from followers and winners from losers. People who think outside of the box make things happen. In other words, they are always on the cutting-edge of breakthroughs and things to come. Cosmetics expert and author, Mary Ash Kay believed, “There are three kinds of people in this world: those who make things happen, those who watch things happen, and those who wonder what happened.”

Your family, community, or country may be going through tough times that calls of "thinking out of the box" solutions . My question to you is , would you step up to the plate to become the catalyst of change to bring faith to the despair, healing to the brokenhearted, freedom to the captives , and hope to the future in such a time as this ?

Like Irish playwright, George Bernard Shaw , i want you to consider taking up the mantle of change by saying ,  “I am convinced that my life belongs to the whole community; and as a long as I live, it is my privilege to do for it whatever I can, for the harder I work the more I live. I rejoice in the life for its own sake. Life is no brief candle to me. It is a sort of splendid torch which I got hold of for a moment, and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible before turning it over to future generations.”

Interestingly, most people never come to grips with the fact we are all equally  bequeathed with the responsibility of carrying the torch of change in a specific department of calling in life for a moment and pass it on to the next generation when the time comes.

But remember : 

The ideal situation for a man or woman to die is to have family members standing with them as they cross over. But imagine, if you will, being on your death-bed and standing around your bed are the ghosts of the ideas, the abilities, the talents, the gifts, the dreams given to you by life that you, for whatever reason, you never pursued those dreams.

You never did anything with those ideas. You never used those talents. You never used those gifts. You never took advantage of those opportunities. And there they are, standing around your bed, looking at you before you take your last dying breath. Looking at you with angry eyes saying, “We came to you, and only you could have given us life and now we must die with you forever - Dr. Howard Thurman

My earnest desire is for you to jettison any excess baggage of traditions, false and unproductive beliefs, and familiarity, to think and do things differently as your family, community, country, the world count on your ideas, cutting-edging   innovations; business, scientific, and technological sapience to make the world a better place . Discover Your Greatness!