Don’t worry, we’re not sending you the most basic of children’s puzzle.

 

Although the for those of you who do like a good puzzle, I discover Suguru the other day 🙂

 

If you can’t see the picture below (if you can’t see it) there are nine dots in a three by three square.

 

Join these dots

 

I want you to try to join them up with four straight lines.

 

Without your pencil / finger leaving the page / screen.

 

Have a go.

 

Or at least think about it.

 

Then scroll down.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Here’s the answer.

 

Join these dots 2

 

If you can’t see it, the line goes further out than the outer dots and comes back in at 45 degrees.

 

To go through other dots at a diagonal.

 

The majority of you will have kept your pencil / finger within the 3×3 box.

 

Even though no one told you to.

 

It’s an example of us falsely applying a self limiting belief to a situation.

 

Based on something we ‘know’ (or at least think) from elsewhere / the past.

 

The answer is the most literal escape you could see of ‘Thinking Outside The Box’.

 

It’s an overused phrase in most workplaces, sure.

 

But it’s not always something people apply as they could outside of work.

 

If you were struggling to regularly do something at work…….

 

You’d look at new ways to do it.

 

New systems that made it all easier.

 

You look at the problem in a different way.

 

Why can’t you do the same with healthy eating and exercise?

 

Try it now, with the bits you’re struggling with.

 

Here’s a few quick examples:

 

  • Take it in turns to cook healthy meals with a family member, friend or complete stranger.

 

  • Get someone else to do your food shopping and you do theirs (either in person or online).

 

  • Make your workouts a fun game – a personal challenge with someone and the winner gets 10p or you wash their dishes or some such.

 

  • You use a system like stickk.com to donate to a ’cause’ you hate every time you don’t do the thing you’ve promised to do.

 

  • Make up some strange condition you’ve now got that means you can’t eat the cakes, biscuits, etc people keep forcing on you.

 

And so on.

 

Finding something hard?

 

Don’t just keep trying to do it the same way, over and over.

 

Think outside the box!

 

Need some help?

 

Ask us, or come to the find-out-more meeting next week 😉 www.theacadmeygtc.co.uk/briefing-meeting.

 

 

Much love,

 

Jon ‘Constantly out of my box’ Hall and Matt ‘Box Fresh’ Nicholson


Jon Hall
Jon Hall

When not helping people to transform their lives and bodies, Jon can usually be found either playing with his kids or taxi-ing them around. If you'd like to find out more about what we do at RISE then enter your details in the box to the right or bottom of this page or at myrise.co.uk - this is the same way every single one of the hundreds who've described this as "one of the best decisions I've ever made" took their first step.