The Right and Left Side of The Box Copy
The Right and Left – Our Preferences
The right and left sides of the inside of our box represent barriers or boundaries that when crossed produce a response inside of us.
- The right side holds the events that positively charge us.
- The left side holds events that negatively charge us.
Imagine a phone battery. Certain activities are going to charge the battery (plugging it into the outlet or computer) and other activities are going to drain the battery (talking on it or listening to music). The same thing happens in our day to day life. Some things will provide us with energy, and other things drain the energy out of us.
The left and right of the box represent these boundaries that we create to help us get more of what we want and less of what we don’t on a daily, hourly, minute by minute basis.
While a lot of our daily experience is neutral in nature, we usually experience non-routine events as being either positively energizing or negatively energizing. When an event crosses either of these two boundaries it sets off an emotional charge, with the right side of the box creating a positive charge and the left side a negative charge.
The Right Side– Positively Energizing Events
On the pre-formed box produced for this program, the right inside has green bars, representing a fully charged battery.
On the right inside, we ask participants to address the question, “As you think about your puzzling situation, what events do you regard as positively energizing? What could you happen or could you experience that would bring you positive emotions?”
Put another way, what are some day to day events that if they occurred would make you feel like today was a good day, or help you think you are getting closer to solving your puzzling situation.
In the past few years, we have had the opportunity to use the box with senior leadership teams focused on the topic, “How does the box impact my ability to be a great leader?” When participants think about the positives, they recall events connected with leadership that either positively charged them – or perhaps just made them feel good.
- “Promoting a deserving member of my team.”
- “Helping someone through a difficult period in her life.”
- “Successfully launching a new product.”
These positively energizing events are like a line in the sand; when anything, big or small, crosses that line you get a sense of excitement, accomplishment, satisfaction or well-being. It energizes you to continue and in general, we want to get more of these kinds of experiences in our lives.
When discussing this in our trainings we find that most of the positively charged responses can be gathered into two broad categories:
Yes! The fist pumping, celebratory feeling that comes when one overcomes adversity, wins the game, or has something particularly energizing occur. Business examples include making a big sale, getting a bonus, getting the promotion, or receiving recognition for a job well done.
Ahhh Yes. A sense of satisfaction and well-being, or deep contentedness. While this is not as energizing, it can be just as, if not more rewarding than the more exhilarating Yes! Business examples include the satisfaction of checking tasks off your to-do list, promoting a well deserving employee, or having a nice lunch with a colleague. It can even be as simple as getting home from work without any traffic or a day with no critical incident.
We ask participants to think about the events around their focus topic that when they happen – or if they were to happen – would positively energize them at these higher or lower levels. Participants will write these up on Post-It Notes® and stick them on the right inside of their boxes.
The Left Side – Negatively Energizing Events
The left side of our box holds those things that we experience as negative or de-energizing. Again, this doesn’t mean they are bad or wrong; it means that when we experience them, our energy shifts in a negative way.
As we have talked with groups, we find that there are two very different ways this negativity shows up:
“Oh no.” Events that drain our energy. “You said it would be ready, but now I’ve got to wait.”; “You mean I should have joined that line; not this one?” Often they are things that recur over time and they trigger a deep sigh of resignation. Enough of these negatively energizing events over time can lead one to just give up.
No way! Events that trigger a desire to fight back: “Oh really; that’s what you want to do?”; “I’m not going to let this happen.”; “I refuse to accept this.”; “This is wrong.” This is a strong negative response that sometimes energizes and drives us to act out in defiance or “righteous anger.”
These negative events are things that you prefer not happen, things that you wouldn’t expect, things that you don’t need or don’t want or things that you may think are wrong.
What’s on the left is not necessarily the opposite of what’s on the. The right and left sides are usually very different.
After this discussion, we ask participants, “As you think about your focus question, ‘How does the box impact my ability to_____’ what would you find on the left side of your box. What experiences would be negatively charged for you?”
Participants then put these triggers on Post-It Notes® on the left inside.
The Impact of the Right and Left Side of the Box on Creativity
“It’s all Just Common Sense Really”
Often, participants look at the left and right sides of their boxes and comment, “This is just common sense.”; “Everybody thinks this – Everybody knows this.”; “Of course I want to avoid this.” Speaking with others reveals different takes: once again we discover the old truth, ‘common sense is not common.’
It’s precisely because we see our own responses as common sense that it becomes difficult to think beyond them – and that’s why they put boundaries on our thinking. People so want ‘right side’ things to happen that they are not willing to think of alternatives that won’t make them happen.
Our target is to make the budget and when we do, we will feel good. We won’t even consider anything that goes outside the bounds of the budget. We might think of different ways of achieving the budget but often feel we shouldn’t break the mold to think of creative ways to exceed it. Taking that risk brings the bigger risk that we might not make budget at all – and if that happens, we won’t feel good.
A creative response goes beyond the need to feel good at achieving the budget.
By taking away the “We make our budget” barrier and allowing us to think of alternatives that go beyond it, we can eventually come back to making budget; this time consciously, while working towards a greater goal – that greater goal or objective in our case is our focus question.
We change these preferences over time.
We use Post-It Notes for this part of the exercise to represent the changing nature of our preferences. As we mature and our context changes our preferences change too. The right and left of my box as a 21-year-old student, as a 32-year-old newlywed, as 38-year-old executive leader, or as a 50 year old entrepreneur are all very different.
These changes in preferences are most pronounced during the major milestones of our lives. When we graduate from being a student to working in our first “real” job, we have to make adjustments on our preferences. When moving to another city we have to make adjustments to our preferences. When we get a promotion, or change to a new company we have to make adjustments to our preferences. In each of these cases (and oh so many more) we adjust our preferences. So while the right side of our box may seem static, they are in fact changing.
The Left and Right side drive behavior.
What we put on the right and left side of our box drives a lot of our (often unconscious) behavior and day to day choices. While this can help make decisions more quickly and consistently, it can also be limiting by taking options out of the realm of possibilities.
If I have a choice between action A and action B and I think that action A will flip a switch on the right side of my box and action B will flip a switch on the left side of my box, what am I going to choose? I’m going to choose action A because I want to get more of the positive stuff.
The challenge to our creativity is when choice B actually could have a greater impact on us solving our puzzling situation. Rather than taking the action that could have a bigger long term positive effect, I still choose A, because it will give me a better short term pay off. That is why we would call this an “in the box” choice. My box is saying that I will get what I want with this choice, or get what I don’t want with another choice, so I keep myself in predictable, comfortable and safe decision making.
But those boundaries and barriers might not be in alignment with our deeper desire to achieve. At different times in our lives we may let go of some of the things that are on the right side of our box and we may have to trudge through or overcome some of the things that are on the left. We might even have to get used to (and even learn to enjoy!) some of the things that are on the left side of our box.
For example, very few people put changing dirty diapers on the right side of the box, but new parents learn how to make this a positive part of raising their child. The reason is that there is something driving their behavior that is greater than wanting to avoid the smell of the dirty diaper. They want to have a healthy and happy baby, and if they don’t change that diaper the baby is going to get a rash, and will cry or might get sick. So they PREFER to change the diaper because it supports their vision of the future, even if the activity itself is not that pleasant. And once they realize that they prefer to do it, they will start having fun as they change the diaper and may even think fondly about it later in life.