If you’re in the box in your thinking toward your teenager and he gets home late, you’ll see him as irresponsible and disrespectful. The things that divide fathers from sons, husbands from wives, and neighbors from neighbors are the same things that divide coworkers from coworkers. In contrast, when you’re out of the box and not limited by your distorted view, you see others as people like you with equally legitimate interests. The 62-year-old that wonders why people don’t like him, the 35-year-old who wants to improve their relationship with others at work, and anyone who wants to unlock their full potential by becoming more aware of how they treat others.

This is because our sense of superiority prevents us from seeing others as equals, so we no longer see a reflection of ourselves in others. Tons of real-life examples are used, and the story just makes you wanna keep reading to find out the next step in getting out of the box.

I feel like there are some good concepts in here, and this would be a great read for someone who is low on emotional intelligence or empathy and needs to expand their worldview to learn how not to be a jerk in the workplace.

Effective self-management is not about avoiding self-deception, it’s about recognizing when you are self-deceived and combating it. If we are mentally healthy and balanced, it is easy for us to feel empathy, because we see a reflection of ourselves in others around us.There’s an empty seat next to him but he doesn’t want to sit with anyone, so he puts his briefcase on the seat and spreads out a newspaper in front of him. We deceive ourselves by seeing other people’s needs as less important, so we treat them like objects. This accessible and thought-provoking book outlines the flow of that discovery and illuminates the choice we face in every moment—the choice that determines our entire experience. That so much of HR practice has been to introduce Fordist practices in all jobs, white or blue collar, and to have done this for decades, talk of my problems being that I’m ‘in the box’ might be due to my needing to live in a cardboard box due to not having a real job that pays a living wage.

When two people are in the box of self-deception, they both blame each other for mistreatment, and react by further mistreating the other person.This book will show you how and why most people are in a state of self-deception where they view their needs as more important than those of people around them. Instead of focusing on producing results, many leaders are trapped “in the box” of distorted thinking—they blame others to justify their own failures and can’t see how they themselves are a problem. This is because the more people are out of the box at a workplace, the more a culture of responsibility will emerge, instead of a culture where people blame each other.

In this interval your spouse did not have the chance to do anything, hence your self-deception was purely about your own self-betrayal. In many organizations, instead of focusing on results, people and departments are “in the box,” blaming and working against each other. Most of us have self-justifying images we’re carrying around with us and we’re ready to defend them against attack. I am still skeptical about author's approach to storytelling, however the material and ideas in this book are way too valuable to overlook, thus I give it 5 stars.

For example, imagine you are having a ferocious argument with your spouse when you realize that you will soon be late for work. The moment you see another human being as a person, with needs, hopes, and worries as real and legitimate as your own, you are out of the box toward them. This book focuses on self-deception, and how treating people as objects and not people, and self-betrayal (not acting on our impulse to help others), hurts families, organizations, and individuals. You can’t know the people you live and work with until you see them outside the box, free of your distorted thinking and blaming. When you’re in the box, you see only your own interests and have a distorted view of others—you see them as objects or as problems standing in your way.