Escape Room

 Escape Room ~ 20210826

             Have you ever done an Escape Room? I did one yesterday under the guise of a “site visit” for future leadership and resilience events. It was everything I had hoped for and more. The experience lasted only an hour, but I was humbled. We got out of the room, but we couldn’t connect the dots – I couldn’t connect the dots – to open the safe in the last room and claim the jackpot available. I told my son, Angus, afterward, “The experience makes me realize how much I miss in my day-to-day. So many things are going on and I’m tunnel visioned and miss so many things, so many opportunities.” My perspective is on that which I’m focused, and this reality leaves me vulnerable and ignorant. It leaves me clueless to the evidence – the dots – which are readily available to anyone of us who are willing to step back and see a bigger picture. This, and a few other things, were some of the observations I believe are relevant to how we can and should approach life.

 

1.  We approach problem sets in the framework of what we know: our experiences, how our thought processes work, and what has worked for us in the past.
2. Our approach, as stated above, can leave us blind to options which are available to us and beneficial to solving the problem set.
3. Approaching a new problem set with a limited perspective while remaining focused solely on your orientation, observation, and decision-making processes will expose the blind spots in your actions as opposed to allowing you to assimilate new data in a relevant manner.
4. Don’t get tunnel vision on your perspective. Take a step back and try to look at the big picture and from different angles of which you may not be immediately aware.
5. Take in the big picture first, then apply your perspective and experience to the problem set. After you’ve done that, look for things you might have missed.
6. Expect the unexpected. The room and experience – the problem set – is created with the expectation participants will need to think “outside the box.”
7. All the answers are in the room. They’re given to you. You just need to connect the dots.

 

I’m certain, time permitting, I would’ve lost my mind in the Escape Room. Some of the clues were not what I expected. When our host shared a few of the clues we had missed, I was humbled because I hadn’t put two and two together. The point being: every problem has a solution. You and I simply must be tenacious in our pursuit of solutions and in our tenacity, we must be focused and open to the bigger picture.