So far - This is the fifth of my bi-weekly blog series on Escaping Moderate Success. It’s for families, business owners, executives, and others. You may have struggles in your life right now, or are perhaps getting tired. You should have the world by the tail and can’t quite figure out why you can’t get there. The parts of your career and life that are not the way you want them are finally getting your attention. As well they should.

Part I – The trap is a level of success so demanding you can’t get through it to the full success.

Part II – That full success is the life that makes us feel so good we can’t stand it. Lot’s more of the good and way less of whatever it is we don’t want.

Part III – Creating more by doing less.

Part IV – The hard way paralyzes us.

Part V – This writing is about “getting out of the brown box”.

The Brown Box

In my last blog, I shared the visual image of this place we find ourselves as we begin to explore the possibilities of powerful change. It’s wherever you are right now. Your brown box includes a lot of good, and a lot that found its way in with you unintended. A good career, where you’re overworked and under appreciated. A successful business, if only everyone could really get clear on their roles and all get on the same page.
The brown box is a figurative big iron box around us. It is familiar. Is hard to see clearly from the inside out. And, virtually impossible to move.
Contrast that to the “bright shiny star”. The picture of life and business you’d like to draw that really would be having it all. If you could be a kid in a candy store. If you could paint a picture that encompasses everything you are capable of creating. Everything you could be. The life with more, more, more abundance, joy, and fulfillment.
That bright shiny star, if you will get clear on it, excited about it, and committed to it, will pull you forward like a giant magnet. But, you can’t get there from here. You can’t just look up, find all the solutions and create everything you’d ever want… Not from inside the brown box. It’s too hard to see out from in there.

You first have to get outside into the clear fresh air and sunshine. Let’s get down to how to do that.

Step 1 – You have already begun! If you are contemplating these messages now and embracing the possibility there may be something here for you, you are already on the move.
Step 2 – Accept. Acknowledge where you are. You can no doubt recite a whole bunch of things you’ve done well. And, you kick yourself like stray dog for things you would have done differently. Stop it! Just accept. There is no good or bad. It all “just is”. Furthermore, the only time that exists is now. Period.
Step 3 – Stop trying to figure out what to do next. You aren’t ready for that. There is way too much noise in your way. Chances are really high you wouldn’t get it right from here anyway. So, “hit pause” and just give yourself permission to be where you are for a while.
Step 4 – Decide to be open to a new process. A new way of looking at how to create your next higher success. That’s what we’re doing now. (Albeit with only so much depth as I can capture in 800 words at a time.)
Step 5 – Let go and step out.
You are now outside the brown box. It was kind of simple. You probably didn’t even feel the big cast iron door hit you on the ass as you escaped. You became open to the possibility. You accepted everything “that is” as simply “what is”. You gave yourself permission to hit pause, to stop feeling so much angst around “the thing”, and to stop trying to solve the problem right at the moment. To create some space, to be open, to breathe a little. You feel hope for something better and higher than you’ve let in before.

You are open to trying out a new process. A process that has to pull you forward, if you will embrace it. A process that will teach you how to walk through life differently, and create your “more”. The more you get to define now. Pulled from the moth balls and cobwebs of your Soul, into a level of clarity you can almost touch and feel.
Recommendation: Just open yourself up to new possibilities. This is expansion. It doesn’t matter if you have a career, own a business, are part of a family office, or whatever else. This is the opportunity to take it to the next level. Not with stress and strain, but with more grace than you’re probably used to. Steps 1 thru 5. That’s your mission for now, should you choose to accept it!
And, if you’re serious about taking it to the next level, I am open to having a conversation. I invite you to reach out to me by phone or email.

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