Your Box

A little while ago I came up with this analogy to help my son work through some of his feelings. He’s a highly sensitive child with an emotional IQ greater than most of the adults I know. So naturally there are a lot of feelings.

He was focusing on all the bad things that happened during his day and working himself up into tears. After listening a while and hearing all the bad things other people did and the long list of things he didn’t get to do, I gave him a big hug and tried something new. Here’s what I came up with.

I said that everyone has a box they carry. This box is ours to fill, we get to decide what we put in it. We can put happy stuff in it or not so happy stuff in it. The choice is ours. The happy stuff is light, easy to carry and they don’t take much room which means we can fit a lot more in there. The not so happy stuff is REALLY heavy and takes up A LOT of room. Sometimes it doesn’t even leave room for the happy stuff.

Everyone has the job of taking care of their own box, and making sure it doesn’t get too heavy to carry. It’s our box and we have it for our whole life, so we have to take really good care of it. Sometimes other people will try to put their negative not so happy stuff in your box too. If that happens, you just kindly say “this isn’t mine to carry” or “no thank you, I don’t want this” and just take it out and throw it away.

I find myself thinking about my own box and what I’ve chosen to fill it with. There are some not so happy things that I wouldn’t take out of my box, because they’ve shaped me into who I am. But I’m realizing that there’s a lot of junk in my box that isn’t mine to carry. So I’m going clean out my box because 1) I’m going to need the space and 2) I’m tired of carrying a heavy box!

Ultimately the choice is ours. What do you want to fill your box with?