Thinking Out of the Box

What is Thinking Out of the Box?

Thinking out of the box is the mode of thought that dares to challenge conventional wisdom, ie it dares to question beliefs so deeply held by so many that they are considered almost sacred. Thinking out the box is an all too rare quality, but when applied it can bring revolutionary leaps in human progress. Even where the existing ways really are most appropriate, an "out of the box" critic can actually enhance their validity by forcing their proponents to justify them. By contrast, thinking inside the box is following convention. doing what everyone else does just because that's the way it's always been done. Thinking in the box allows survival, but without innovation we cannot do much more than stand still and stagnate.

Why Think Out of the Box?

Do we survive or thrive? If it ain't broke don't fix it runs the old adage. But evolution is based on the continued improvement of that which already works. From the very earliest forms of life that gained a foothold in a barren universe progress has come from doing things different than how they'd been done before. A common human tendency is to seek the acceptance and approval of our peers. Another is the desire to operate within our comfort zone. The first tendency means we tend to conform to popular opinion. Perhaps we feel safer in a crowd, are afraid of possible ridicule. Perhaps we once held contrary views, but have had these stifled by societal pressure. The second tendency means we simply accept what we are told because we are too lazy to think for ourselves. Add to those the conditioning to conform, be a good citizen etc etc etc... And by following these tendencies we can survive the various trials of life. We can get a job, make enough to live, with perhaps enough left over for a yearly vacation. We'll certainly survive, but we'll be anonymous, and when our time on earth is finally done we'll leave behind nothing but the memories of a few loved ones. By thinking out of the box we give ourselves the chance to go beyond this bare existence and begin to fulfill the true potential of our earthly incarnation. Not everyone can be a Da Vinci or Einstein, but we can all try to maximize our own particular potential. Given the most precious gift of incarnation that is surely our most basic duty.

How to Think Out of the Box

Firstly, don't get in a rut. Avoid the comfort zone. Push yourself. Accept, and actively seek out new challenges. Take chances. Avoid routines, or if you end up

with one, change it for change's sake. If you usually drink coffee at breakfast, try a cup of tea instead. If you normally take route A, try route B, or C, once in a while. Get into the habit of questioning and challenging established practice. Not all established practice is wrong, but where it is right, rising to a challenge will strengthen its claim to legitimacy. Is there a different way of doing this/that? Or rather how many different ways can you think of? Allow yourself freedom to brainstorm on a frequent and regular basis. In brainstorming phase accept everything that comes into your head, don't censor yourself. The wilder the idea, the better it is. Of course, brainstorming needs to be followed by rationalization, but at a later time. Keep a note of all your ideas, even the initially rejected ones. You never know when they might be useful. Thinking out of the box is hard. It uses more energy and creates more stress than simply going with flow. Very few can comfortably operate out of the box 100% of the time. If we can employ that faculty 10% of the time we are probably doing better than 90% of the population. It follows that we need to judge very carefully which situations are worth making that extra effort for. Most times it's fine to drift along on auto-pilot, saving our out of the box thinking for things that matter to us most. All we can take from this world is experience, all else is illusion. We live each moment only once, so we might as well make the most of it. And we make the most of it not by accepting, but challenging accepted ways.

Think out of box:-1. There is a man who lives on the top floor of a very tall building. Everyday he gets the elevator down to the ground floor to leave the building to go to work. Upon returning from work though, he can only travel half way up in the lift and has to walk the rest of the way unless it's raining! Why? 2. A man and his son are in a car accident. The father dies on the scene, but the child is rushed to the hospital. When he arrives the surgeon says, "I can't operate on this boy, he is my son!" How can this be? 3. A man is wearing black. Black shoes, socks, trousers, jumper, gloves and balaclava. He is walking down a black street with all the street lamps off. A black car is coming towards him with its light off but somehow manages to stop in time. How did the driver see the man? 4. One day Kerry celebrated her birthday. Two days later her older twin brother, Terry, celebrated his birthday. How? 5. Why is it better to have round manhole covers than square ones? This is logical rather than lateral, but it is a good puzzle that can be solved by lateral thinking techniques. It is supposedly used by a very well-known software company as an interview question for prospective employees. 6. A man went to a party and drank some of the punch. He then left early. Everyone else at the party who drank the punch subsequently died of poisoning. Why did the man not die? 7. A man died and went to Heaven. There were thousands of other people there. They were all naked and all looked as they did at the age of 21. He looked around to see if there was anyone he recognized. He saw a couple and he knew immediately that they were Adam and Eve. How did he know? 8. A woman had two sons who were born on the same hour of the same day of the same year. But they were not twins. How could this be so? 9. A man walks into a bar and asks the barman for a glass of water. The barman pulls out a gun and points it at the man. The man says 'Thank you' and walks out. 10. A man without eyes sees plums on a tree. He neither takes plums nor leaves plums. How can this be? 11. Jack and Jill are found dead, lying on the floor in the living room of a house, in a puddle of water. How did they die? 12. A man is found dead in an empty field with a pack strapped to his back. How did he die?

13. A man is found hanging in a completely empty warehouse high off the ground. How did the man manage to hang himself. 14. A frog is dead in the centre of a pond, surrounded by ten feet of water on all directions. How can the frog get to land? 15. You have three lights in a box, each of which is connected to a switch outside the box. The box is closed. You need to figure out which switch to corresponds to which light and you can open the box only once (and you can't manipulate the switches after you open the box). How do you do this? 16. A pot of gold is on a square island surrounded by a chasm 10 metres wide and of infinite depth. You have two 9.8 metre poles. How do you get across to the pot of gold and get back with it. 17. Mel Colly stared through the dirty soot-smeared window on the 26th floor of the office tower. Overcome with depression he slid the window open and jumped through it. It was a sheer drop outside the building to the ground. Miraculously after he landed he was completely unhurt. Since there was nothing to cushion his fall or slow his descent, how could he have survived? 18. A man is hiking up a snowy mountain, he comes across a cabin. Inside the cabin is a small fire and two dead men. How did they die? (They did not burn to death.) 19. Three guys walk into a hotel, and they're going to split the cost of a room. The room is $30. They each kick in $10 and head up to their room. The manager gets wind of it and tells the clerk the room is only $25. He hands five $1 bills to the bell hop and tells him to go refund the guys' money. On the way up to the room, the bell hop gets to thinking, as bell hops are wont to do, and says to himself, "No way can three guys split $5, I'm going to help out." He stuffs $2 in his pocket, knocks on the door, gives each guy back a buck and heads back downstairs to the desk, glowing in the warmth of a job well done. So now each guy has paid $9. $9 times 3 is $27 plus the two the bell hop stole--only $29! Where is the other buck?

1. he is a kid, he can only reach the 12 button if it raining and he has an umbrella

2.its the boys Mom

3.its the daytime

4.She was born right before leap year and she celebrates it on that day whereas her brother celebrates it two days later because he wants to have a birthday every and celebrates it the day after his real birthday

5.A square manhole cover can be turned and dropped down the diagonal of the manhole. A round manhole cannot be dropped down the manhole. So for safety and practicality, all manhole covers should be round.

6.The poison in the punch came from the ice cubes. When the man drank the punch the ice was fully frozen. Gradually it melted, poisoning the punch.

7.they didn't have belly buttons

8.they were triplets, you didn't mention the third son

9.The man had hiccups. The barman recognized this from his speech and drew the gun in order to give him a shock. It worked and cured the hiccups - so the man no longer needed the water.

10.the answer lies in the singular. the man doesn't have eyes, but he has one eye. He saw plums (2 plums). He didn't take plums (he took only one plum), so he didn't leave plums, he left one plum.

11.Jack and Jill were goldfish, their tank got knocked over.

12.the guy jumped from an airplane, but his parachute didn't go off

13.He climbed on a block of ice which has since melted

14.Its dead it cant

15.turn the first switch on. leave it on for a while... turn off the first . turn the second one on. look in the box. if light is on then it is switch two . if the bulb is off touch the bulb . if it is hot then it is switch one . if cool then switch three..

16.You can take one pole and lay it across the corner of the chasm so each end of the pole is touching a different side of the chasm. The middle of the pole will now be closer than 9.8 meters to the island.

17.he was a window washer he started on the outside

18.It was a plane crash. The two men were pilots in the cabin of an airplane.

19.the three guys spent 9 dollars...so the cashier has 27...because 25 in the register and 2 in his/her pocket and each guy has a dollar because 10-9=1. 27+1+1+1=30.