When I was younger I always liked books that had pictures because even if I didn’t know what the words meant, I could always create a story or try to use these pictures to help me understand what the author was trying to tell me. One of my favorite quotes that many people have used is “a picture is worth a 1000 words”. I can come up with all kinds of ideas for a picture. Like the one above which is a “Pictogram”. I am trying to tell you what this article is going to be about. In this case “thinking outside the box”.

When we think about people in history that are known for thinking outside the box we come up with names like Thomas Edison the inventor of the light bulb and many other devices, Albert Einstein whose theory of relativity revolutionized modern science and Steve Jobs founder of Apple computer and the creator of many innovative Apple products. All three of these added out of the box thinkers have something else in common. All three were dyslexic.

We as dyslexics have an uncanny ability to think differently than most people. We process information and come away with different things. You don’t have to spend much time with me to recognize that I think differently. Some of that thinking differently leads to my struggles in reading, writing and organizing. But other aspects of thinking differently we like to call dyslexic superpowers. These R the unique strengths that many people with dyslexia demonstrate. They will become the strange that formed the foundation for success. Thinking outside the box is one of the reasons that one in three entrepreneurs are dyslexic. There are some other reasons why this happens but we will get to that in another article. It's about understanding these abilities and trying to apply it to better whatever you're doing.

But thinking outside the box Is not always easy. That is especially true when working through our friends who are much more comfortable left brain thinkers. What sometimes happens is the discomfort with thinking outside the box gets connected to a recognition of struggles with reading and writing and this undermines the validity of the outside the box thinking. The criticism goes somewhere along the lines of why should I look at this out of the box idea when this person's lack of ability to read makes me believe that the idea is not well grounded. This may sound a little farfetched to some people but most dyslexics had experienced this in some form or another. As is true of all of the dyslexic superpowers, it takes strength and conviction to run with an idea to see it through.

Seeing the idea through requires something else. It requires that as one smarter than me once said “be great in act as you have been in thought “. So, if you are going to think outside the box to see it through you're going to have to act outside the box. Again. this will often create discomfort with those around us. But it is essential to success.

The last critical element of thinking outside the box is accepting that failure is a part of the process. As Edison said “I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.” The discomfort many people feel about thinking outside the box is that it raises the probability of failure. If you stick to the safe solutions you can predict to a greater degree the probability of success or failure. It is hard to evaluate the tradeoff between probability of failure and value of a new idea outside the box. So, it requires you to embrace the idea of thinking outside the box and pursuing breakthrough solutions to problems. As Edison also said, “Many of life’s failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up”.

This last element is extremely important for those of us that are parents of children with dyslexia. We need to create environments that embrace out of the box thinking and by so doing accept and encourage failure. Many of the people and institutions that our children will encounter will resist this. There will be times when our children will need air cover when tapping into this dyslexic superpower. There will also be times when we are the ones resisting.

Thinking outside the box. Embrace it.