The origin of the phrase "thinking outside the box" is a bit murky, though it is sometimes attributed to the workplace culture at the Walt Disney Company, where a simple nine-dot puzzle shaped like a grid was used by management consultants to demonstrate creative problem-solving. Over time, the directive to think outside the box has been given so frequently that what we now consider "in the box" has expanded considerably. In It's Not About the Shark, David Niven (author of the 100 Simple Secrets series) aims to shake up our stagnant notion of how to address problems.
The titular shark refers to the mechanical creature used in Steven Spielberg's Jaws. That animatronic beast was plagued with malfunctions, and Spielberg found himself running short on time and money with only two apparent options: sink everything into repairing the shark and likely end up with an unfinished movie, or press ahead with the shark he had and wind up with a joke of a movie. As film buffs know, Spielberg carved out a third option: in the movie, the shark doesn't appear for the first 81 minutes.
Niven's book explores what it means to think outside the box, how we look at the problems we face, how we see ourselves and how to be comfortable with the ambiguity difficult challenges can present. He doesn't provide specific solutions here but instead offers a shining toolkit for more adaptive thinking. --Matthew Tiffany, LCPC, writer for Condalmo and psychotherapist