Have you ever noticed that there are some people with whom you constantly struggle? They grate on your nerves; they easily highlight to you some of your strengths while frustratingly displaying their own weaknesses. In fact when you think about having to interact with them you almost think of them more like an object to get around rather than a person with whom you engage.
I would like to suggest to you today that there is a simple and easy way for you to deal with the constant frustration and annoyance:
Open up the lid and get out of the box.
You see all of us have moments or seasons that we are in the box. According to the people who put together the book Leadership and Self Deception – the box is an internal posture where our thinking and perspective becomes self-deceived. Inside the box we:
- Inflate our virtues, while deflating others virtues
- Inflate others faults, while deflating our own faults
- See yourself as a hardworking and important
- Viewing others as inconsiderate, lazy and ungrateful
The box is a dangerous place to be – because in the box we do not see things clearly. In the box we view ourselves as better than we actually are as a way of justifying our thoughts and actions towards others. It is a distorted way to live. In the box people are not people; they are problems.
When you view people as speed bumps, roadblocks or annoyances you are out of alignment – because you do not see people as God sees them. (Click to tweet) In fact John Maxwell recently taught, “God loves the people that you don’t like.” When you feel like people are objects to deal with you are in the box.
So who comes to mind? Who are the people in your life that right now you struggle to see clearly because you are in the box? I’m sure for many of us a name is already in our mind. If not, talk to your spouse or a close friend – they likely see what you might not be able to see.
How do you get out of the box? In the box it is impossible to view or treat someone as a human, because we have to play a number of mind games to justify ourselves. Getting out of the box requires us to intentionally choose to look at a person as a man or woman that God came to redeem.
We get out of the box by choosing to serve the people with whom we struggle. (Click to tweet) Because often times the reason we are in the box is because we stopped serving. Taking on the mindset of a servant helps you to continually view people as people and not as objects. (Click to tweet) So whomever you struggle with – where there is relational mess or frustration – choose to go serve them today. It will not solve every problem, but it will help you get out of the box so you can see them again as a person.
Cory Lebovitz 