When I first heard the lyric “A room without a roof” I knew there was something interesting about that line as I’m sure that to most people it sang out as something a little unusual. Whether it was the lyrics, the music or even because it was sung by Pharrel Williams it managed to engage so many people and the song was very quickly propelled to number one!!

As a trainer of Neuro Linguistic Programming, Coach and Learning & Development Professional I spend a significant part of everyday supporting people and working with them to allow them to change the way they think and feel about themselves. Many people know and some people just have a hunch, that the world can be different for them. That they have the potential to be so much more but are left not quite knowing what to do for the world to be different for them. Often left believing that changing the world on the outside will change the world on the inside.

Comfort zones are strange things and the reality of what we can experience and can’t experience always makes me smile; this is so often different to the reality of the world that we actually experience. In most popular thinking we appear to be either in our comfort zone and hence happy or out of it and not very comfortable at all. The reality is that when we are actually in our comfort zone, we very often switch off as we are comfortable, happy and there is no real need to focus on the world around us. True learning or the delivery of a real optimal performance doesn’t really kick in until we step out of our comfort zone and we move into our performance, learning or adventure zone. This is a long way from panic but it could also be a long way from comfortable. But as I am sure you can imagine the results for your discomfort are amazing. The reward is true growth, pride and learning, should you wish to grasp hold of these when they are presented. Sometimes this may only be obvious once the heart rate has returned to normal.

I spend my life looking to experience places quite literally without walls. The great outdoors is the most amazing metaphor for thinking outside the box. If you want to think differently and experience your world differently and find solutions to problems that you couldn’t previously imagine, then get out of the box. “If you always do what you have always done, then you will always get what you have always got”. I will also tell you that as a former aircraft engineer “that you can’t use the logic or thinking that created the problem, to fix the problem”! Because if it worked, then your thinking would not have created the problem in the first place, therefore thinking differently is the key!! So maybe the best way to think outside the box is not to get into or create the box in the first place. So going in to the Great Outdoors sometimes quite literally allows you to get out of our box.

But of course the box isn’t actually the box is it. The box is the fabric and framework by which we create the belief that operates in our world. The “I cant’s” and “shouldn’t” as well as the “I am’s” and “I will’s”. But of course for some people turning your world upside down to totally change a long held belief may be a great idea but in itself may be quite a challenge.

Just daring to think differently may well be placing ourselves outside our comfort zone.

So maybe a room without a roof is a great half way house. A tent is a box but in a different place a little less structured than home or the thoughts and beliefs that we have lived in for many years. Maybe it’s time to go camping, maybe the room without a roof is that place where we aren’t comfortable but are exploring our world differently.

For me I call this A Mind 4 Adventure and just sometimes we need a little bit of support to see our world without a roof.

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