Week 1 Blog Post #5 - Response to Devin Bryant

Week 1 Reading- Smash the boxby: Devin Bryant

The Art of Possibility definitely spoke to me. I was immediately drawn into the message because it speaks my language. I was not completely aware of the ability to change your perspective and look at the world around you in a new light until my freshman year of college. I had little glimpses of it through out my life. Times when I felt more in power and in control of what was going on, but I could never really pinpoint why. When I finished my freshman year of college I went to work at a camp for the summer and my whole reality shifted. Part of it was being in the woods, away from civilization for so long, surrounded by strangers and none of the material trappings I usually had. Another aspect was all the time spent talking, reflecting, having conversations with other people who were feeling this shift as well. It felt as though I was in another universe where all my priorities were changing. I could really hear myself and others in a way I'd never experienced before, because my perspective had changed, the way I looked at the world had been altered. Forget about thinking outside the box, I had smashed the box and felt like I was floating in space looking around going, "why on earth was I living in that tiny little can"?

So as I was reading about the need and ability to "reinvent" the way you look at situations, it really struck a chord with me. I truly feel that we as humans get so caught up in our lives, schedules, paths that we feel we need to be on, that we are almost wearing blinders. And there are little things that happen every once in a while that shake us up, get our attention and make us look to the left and right and see how closeted we really are. But unfortunately, I have not figured out how to stay in this place where I can be in control of shifting my perspective, and I think that is something a lot of people struggle with as well because we get so caught up in the drama of daily life and forget how to look at our lives differently.

The story about white water rafting and "toes to nose and look for the boat" really clicked with the way I was raised. I think that when you are "thrown out of the boat" as Roz said, it is really like being sucked underwater with no idea of what is up or down ad there is an awful fear that you may never make it to the surface. And what I've realized over the years is that many people in the world have absolutely no idea what to do when this happens because they've never been told that there is a way to help yourself. Either they focus on the negative and can't even see the light streaming through the water, or they completely give up hope when something goes wrong and don't even bother swimming to save themselves. But in my family, the motto I've heard all my life is "everything happens for a reason". I've heard others use this in a religious way, to say that God is taking care of the situation, but that wasn't the way my family looked at it. I remember when I was little my mom explaining to me that with every situation in life there is an upside and a downside. You can always find a way to make something good or to make it bad. All you have to do is make the choice to look at it in a positive way and then it's easy to find a way to change the way you look at anything. I think this was what Roz was talking about when she told her story, because having that mantra in my head has really helped me get through rough times in my life when I've fallen out of the boat. I didn't worry about drowning because I had the voice in my head telling me what to do. And I think that's what this book is really trying to say, that if you can take control over the way you look at situations in life, you can make anything happen.

My Response: