Poke the Box

Poke the Box by Seth Godin        Hardback Book: 83pages                       

 I am a fan of Seth Godin’s books.   He speaks to the reader like your best friend who is in your corner and trying to motivate you to be your best.    He says a lot though his books are not that long.   I think he has figured out a person’s attention span and hits hard with juicy bits fast and doesn’t make his books seem overwhelming.   You come away feeling like you have covered a text book in how do things better in better ways, faster.   I really like his style.   In Poke the Box his message all the way through is to stop sitting back and letting fear keep you from doing what you want to do.   He explores how humans are brought up to think they should keep quiet and not make waves in order to get by in life.   However, never speaking up keeps you out of the notice and under the radar of the powers that be.  Kind of herd mentality.   Just sit in your cubicle with your head down working for 8 hours, leave and come back and do it again the next day until you either die of boredom or retire.     He says you have to poke the box.    You have to speak up, get noticed, if you have a good idea – speak up – if it’s not a good idea, so what?    Every brilliant mind has had so many failures and bad ideas along the way – that is what lets you know what doesn’t work which gets you ever closer to what DOES work.    He calls fear the lizard base nature of man that causes us not to believe in our own abilitites and how well we can handle, accomplish and come up with viable new ideas for doing things from work to home to leisure.    We have to fight the tendency we have to not believe in ourselves and work toward realizing the dreams we hold.   We have to stop sitting back and letting others get the praise and glory for ideas we may have had first just were too hesitant to make them come to fruition.   We have to poke the box and if we are in a place that stifles new ideas does not respect people who try to come up with innovation to increase sales, increase market recognition to push ourselves to the forefront so that we can advance if all of these things are not happening where we are then we need to move on once we have made the way.   He doesn’t advocate jumping off the cliff to see if we can fly, he advocates building a bridge to our next horizon then cross that bridge and go where we are appreciated.    Public school and many corporations forbid their students or employees to start, to stand out and perform at top level they can hold us back and hold us down so that we fit into a controlled mold.   Seth Godin promotes poking the box – ask the hard questions of others and yourself.   Don’t accept the status quo set your standards and Go-Go-Go!   Everybody else will see your bravery  so few have the heart to poke the box.     Achieve and be recognized or be mediocre and invisible.   He ends with a quote from Siddhartha Gautama, “ There are two mistakes one can make along the road to truth.   Not going all the way, and not starting.”     Realize your truth and poke the box until you make others realize it , too.