If you are going to do anything with life, you sometimes have to move away from it, beyond the usual measurements. You must occasionally follow visions and dreams. Bede Jarrett

Everyone has at least one box. Most of the time we have many. We have spent years building it carefully. So very carefully we often don’t see it anymore. Or maybe we have gotten so good at avoiding bumping into the walls that we just don’t notice them anymore.

This box is made of agreements, assumptions and rules. Everything we have agreed to feel, know, do. Everything we assume is right, wrong or expected of us. Rules about how to be, dress, behave, live and die. This box often makes us feel safe, and often lets us just live our life on auto-pilot.

Recently, while working with a group in a strategic planning session, I found myself realizing that everyone in the group could not see their boxes. I was completely struck by their pent up passion and desire to have something different – for them to be more empowered, more able to direct their resources, more engaged in creating quality and value – while at the same time truly believing that they could not. So here I was with over 50 physicians, nurses and support staff who unfailingly help over 180,000 of the neediest people each year, and who truly wanted to make significant change in the experience and quality care their patients received.

And they were getting stuck in their box. They were not even aware of the assumptions, expectations and rules they had placed on themselves about how to be. They could see the scheduling problem that affected them and their patient’s disposition. (And many other problems they wanted to change.) But they could not see that the problem was controlling them. What they could not see was their ability to define the patient experience, the length of time each patient needs, to set the patient’s expectations. In other words, they have the ability to define and communicate what quality means to them and others. Instead, they were boxed in by the rules they were agreeing to live and work by every day. Rules that say someone else sets the schedule, doctors only do certain things and nurses do other things, more money fixes all problems and the assumption that everyone should know what quality care looks like.

This problem, this box, was overriding their ability to see and feel their passion, their heartfelt calling to help those who need it most. They had lost sight of, and connection with, the powerful drive that gives meaning to their lives. As a result, they are living in such a way that protects and maintains their box, so it keeps them boxed in – and it’s making them feel tired, ineffective and frustrated.

This is a lesson for all of us. Remember, we all have choice. Always. We make that choice by our actions. We can make choices and take action that supports our passion. Or we can not. I find that living from your passion is always more fulfilling, exciting and energizing. (Surely you remember the feeling?)

So, if your passion isn’t able to breathe and grow, then change the rules, expectations and assumptions you hold. Re-write them and re-make them so that they do support your passion. You don’t have to ask permission and you certainly don’t have to wait to be told that you can do it.

This is a reminder to all of us who started our company, or signed on to that amazing job, that we have an exceptional passion. Re-connect and feel your passion and take a look at all the assumptions, expectations and rules that have boxed it in. Our business passions can not afford to be stuffed into boxes. Every company – big and small – and every employee throughout every organization, is being called on to un-stuff their passions. Our society, our economy, our environment desperately needs to have the means to breathe easier and it can only happen as we let our own passions out of their box so they can grow again.