![\"police](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/policepsychologyblog.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/02\/pasta-with-meatballs.jpg?resize=254%2C169\")
meatballs. I didn\u2019t want to make beef meatballs with spaghetti in tomato sauce one of her favorites; I didn\u2019t want to make Swedish meatballs with gravy, but I had this urge to make a meatball, lighter with a different taste. Maybe in a white wine sauce. I was driving so I had the luxury of being able to think, something that I don\u2019t get to do often (parents will understand that). I got thinking \u201cout of the box\u201d of spaghetti and meatballs and there was a lot of room out there. Veal would make it lighter, and replace most of the parsley flakes with sage, I was on the road to making something totally unique. I ended up with radiatori pasta with veal meatballs made with sage and fresh Parmesan in a white wine, Gorgonzola and walnut cream roux. It was delicious. (recipe below)<\/span><\/p>\nHow do you \u201cthink out of the box?\u201d I mean life is a series of problems that must be solved, how do you go away from the routine solutions and come up with something that is out there? How do you make something ordinary into something impossibly creative? How does a little Italian girl from New York City, which must have a million little Italian girls, all of a sudden have outlandish tastes, wear an egg to the Grammy\u2019s, and become Lady Gaga? It\u2019s summed up in one word\u2026.<\/span><\/p>\n There was a famous study done by Guilford in the 70\u2019s where he gave people a 9-dot drawing with the directions to \u201cdraw 4 lines to connect the dots and do not lift the A follow-up study by other researchers showed that even when the experimenters told the people the secret of extending the lines outside the box, only five percent more of the participants completed the project. They concluded that thinking outside the box really isn\u2019t affected by giving people directions, but it is inherent in people. Essentially those <\/span>twenty percent <\/span>of us who think outside the box are freaks. There is much written about thinking outside the box, particularly in the business literature, which calls outside the box thinking \u201ca paradigm shift.\u201d When you see something totally in a different way, you are making the paradigm shift. And further, the literature suggests you can be taught to think this way of thinking. Brainstorming is a way to teach this method, so they say. Just come up with ideas and don\u2019t place any value on whether they solve your problems. Just blurt them out and don\u2019t think as to whether they have anything to do toward your goal. You essentially have to turn off your internal editor. In my experience, some people take to brainstorming, but most don\u2019t. They have to value every suggestion as it comes out, even when you tell them not to. I would say only about 1 in 5 can really brainstorm effectively. (20% for those keeping track).<\/span><\/p>\n Another way they teach is to take something really old, or something from a different field and apply it to the problems at hand, or the things for which you want an answer. Start with a concept and make it travel to a different dimension by using the old principles to help solve your problem. You may not find a perfect match, but keep working it and something else will come along.\u00a0\u00a0 Knute Rockne supposedly got a very successful football formation, thus creating the \u201cFour Horsemen,\u201d from a dance routine when he took his players for some culture. I did this with shot-peening<\/a>, the theory of relativity<\/a> and the time management matrix<\/a>, etc. This gets your mind thinking about something new and something creative. I would say about 1 in 5 person can do this also. (Damn another 20%, and probably the same 20%).<\/span><\/p>\n A final technique is to make a concerted effort to think about the far distant future. What convenience would the future bring that we don\u2019t have today.\u00a0 Sci-Fi something and make it so impossible that it could never happen. Then work backwards and figure out what it would take to make it happen. I\u2019d like a computer database of problems and techniques that I could just type something in and get the answer. Type in depression and the words and a few techniques would pop up.\u00a0 I\u2019d like a meal maker that you could push a button, put in a pill and a burger would be created. I\u2019d like a place where you could just travel all the time and meet people and enjoy the sites. I once wished for a channel that would just play rock music videos when I was in college in the mid-70\u2019s, in fact even wrote up a business plan for it for a class. RTV<\/strong>, I was going to call it. There was a lot of disappointment when some of the kids in that class found out I didn\u2019t open MTV when I moved to New York. Think of the future and maybe something creative will come of it.<\/span><\/p>\n I promised the one word for thinking out of the box \u2014 MEATBALLS!\u00a0 It all boils down to meatballs. See, we are all creative and outside the box thinkers when we are young. That is why so many artists and songwriters are young. Our young lives are dynamic and we are constantly changing. Then somewhere it starts to hit us. There is criticism behind the doors of adulthood. There is people that don\u2019t like anything new and in-the-box-thinkers that destroy the creativity of our youth. I knew when I made veal meatballs, it had a likelihood of tasting really bad. I figured sage was paired with veal in saltimbocca in Rome, and Parmesan cheese always tasted good on saltimbocca so I gave it a shot. The meatball became a canvas for my being creative, like in my youth. Meatballs was my daughter\u2019s choice\u2026thinking outside the box made a delicious meal. I once did an entire therapy session for an English major, turned cop, entirely in Haiku. Yep, 5-7-5 syllables. \u201cYou need a warm place, where the stillness is quieting, can think for yourself.\u201d \u201cI am happy doc, when I can think for myself, you are quite correct.\u201d He was missing writing and now does it just about every day.<\/span><\/p>\n When you are an outside the box thinker, you are going to be unhappy a lot. Some people want to rein you in, some people don\u2019t like unconventional thought. You have to deal with that. It seems twenty percent think outside the box normally, but I bet that amount is much smaller, closer to five percent. I have seen many of you who have written for this blog awaken the out of the box life. However, I believe that you can become an out of the box thinker by practicing and saying the hell with the criticism of others. So, don\u2019t be afraid to think out of the box. Now enjoy your youth, even if it took you 50 years to find it again!<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Blog Administrator: Gary S. Aumiller, Ph.D. ABPP<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n Please share this article from down below.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n Please join the email list on the top of the sidebar and you can get these sent to your email.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n Come back regularly for more updated blogs on police psychology<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n I don\u2019t cook with recipes so you are on your own for amounts, but I will try this one. I took around a pound of ground veal, about ten chopped sage leaves, 2 eggs, a little parsley flakes, chopped scallions, a lot of Parmesan cheese shredded, bread crumbs, salt, pepper and a little nutmeg. Form into meatballs and baked them at 375 degrees until done. I melted butter and put flour in for a roux. Added first white wine, reduce, then cream, reduce, then some chicken stock. Reducing after each liquid. Crumbled up some gorgonzola cheese, not too much, threw that in. I hit with butter to finish. Salt and Pepper. Heavy pepper. \u00be pound of a pasta like penne, radiatori, farfalle, ruote, oriecchette, gemelli, oooh I bet this would be good with gnocchi! Mangia!<\/em><\/p>\n<\/body>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Police Psychology | Thinking Outside the Box \u00a0 Police psychology would tell us that sometimes you have to \u201cthink out of the box.\u201d I wanted meatballs the other day! I got it in my brain to make meatballs, and my 9-year old daughter loves meatballs, so I wanted to make meatballs. I didn\u2019t want to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[17168887],"tags":[17168892,17168797,17168831],"class_list":["post-1276","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-leadership","tag-out-of-the-box-thinking","tag-police-psychology","tag-police-stress"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":4945,"url":"http:\/\/policepsychologyblog.com\/?p=4945","url_meta":{"origin":1276,"position":0},"title":"Police Psychology | If I Can Just Get Through This Month","author":"Gary Aumiller","date":"December 13, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"Police Psychology | If I Can Just Get Through This Month by Gary S. Aumiller, Ph.D.\u00a0 ABPP \u201c\u2026and I in my cap, had just settled our brains for a long winter\u2019s\u2026\u201d fight!\u00a0 Perhaps if Clement Clarke Moore would have written his poem in 2016 instead of 1822, this may have\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Mastering Emotions"","block_context":{"text":"Mastering Emotions","link":"http:\/\/policepsychologyblog.com\/?cat=17165629"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/policepsychologyblog.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/12\/presents-300x221.png?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":672,"url":"http:\/\/policepsychologyblog.com\/?p=672","url_meta":{"origin":1276,"position":1},"title":"Police Psychology | Make Up (of) Your Mind","author":"Gary Aumiller","date":"September 2, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"Police Psychology | Make Up (of) Your Mind \u00a0 Police stress can sometimes originate from cops who are thrust into a work situation where supervisors don\u2019t understand how they think and process information. This is an area where police psychology can be of tremendous help to departmental leaders. The police\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Police Stress"","block_context":{"text":"Police Stress","link":"http:\/\/policepsychologyblog.com\/?cat=17168885"},"img":{"alt_text":"fluffy","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/policepsychologyblog.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/09\/fluffy-300x198.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":36,"url":"http:\/\/policepsychologyblog.com\/?p=36","url_meta":{"origin":1276,"position":2},"title":"Book Review: Personality Assessment in Police Psychology","author":"Gary Aumiller","date":"February 6, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"I have to admit, I had no intention of reading this book in one sitting, in fact, I was only really going to read about half of the essays in this collection of essays.\u00a0 I have to admit I was invited to write a chapter in this book but really\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Books"","block_context":{"text":"Books","link":"http:\/\/policepsychologyblog.com\/?cat=17168876"},"img":{"alt_text":"Weiss","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/policepsychologyblog.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/01\/weiss-212x300.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":50,"url":"http:\/\/policepsychologyblog.com\/?p=50","url_meta":{"origin":1276,"position":3},"title":"Book Review: A Handbook for Psychological Fitness-For-Duty Evaluations in Law Enforcement","author":"Gary Aumiller","date":"January 22, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"Cary Rostow asked me to review his book and I thought \u201cno problem.\u201d\u00a0 It was a supposedly a Handbook on Fitness for Duty Examinations.\u00a0 So I figured it would be a short, little boring thing with a lot of statistics, but I will slog through it and write something inane\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Books"","block_context":{"text":"Books","link":"http:\/\/policepsychologyblog.com\/?cat=17168876"},"img":{"alt_text":"Rostow","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/policepsychologyblog.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/03\/rostow-216x300.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":471,"url":"http:\/\/policepsychologyblog.com\/?p=471","url_meta":{"origin":1276,"position":4},"title":"Police Psychology | Can’t Take My Mind Off of You","author":"Gary Aumiller","date":"July 18, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"Police Psychology | Can't Take My Mind Off of You \u00a0 Police psychology deals with a lot of obsession. Police stress can also be the result of obsession. I am big on obsession (can't you tell?). I see obsession everywhere (anger, depression, love, hate, writing a blog). In fact, you\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Mastering Thoughts"","block_context":{"text":"Mastering Thoughts","link":"http:\/\/policepsychologyblog.com\/?cat=17168878"},"img":{"alt_text":"man thinking in different directions","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/policepsychologyblog.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/06\/man-thinking-in-different-directions-300x300.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":810,"url":"http:\/\/policepsychologyblog.com\/?p=810","url_meta":{"origin":1276,"position":5},"title":"Hogwarts and Police Psychology","author":"Gary Aumiller","date":"October 26, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"Hogwarts and Police Psychology by Drs. Gary Aumiller and Scott Stubenrauch (Guest Blogger) What if we told you that Hogwarts was real and police psychology is used frequently with the new students? What if there really was a Sorting Hat that could define your personality and place you into a\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Public Information Bureau"","block_context":{"text":"Public Information Bureau","link":"http:\/\/policepsychologyblog.com\/?cat=17168888"},"img":{"alt_text":"POLICE PSYCHOLOGY, testing","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/policepsychologyblog.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/10\/testing-300x200.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]}],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p60sbO-kA","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/policepsychologyblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1276","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/policepsychologyblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/policepsychologyblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/policepsychologyblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/policepsychologyblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1276"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/policepsychologyblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1276\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1291,"href":"http:\/\/policepsychologyblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1276\/revisions\/1291"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/policepsychologyblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1276"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/policepsychologyblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1276"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/policepsychologyblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1276"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Experimenting Outside the Box<\/strong><\/h2>\n
![\"nine](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/policepsychologyblog.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/02\/nine-dots.jpg?resize=193%2C193\")
pencil off the paper\u201d. Actually the diagram was from the turn of the century, as in 1900\u2019s. It required drawing the lines outside of the box of dots then it was relatively easy to work out. About twenty per cent could do the drawing. He figured eighty per cent couldn\u2019t \u201cthink outside the box\u201d to complete the task. The figure went viral (in the 70\u2019s that meant something totally different than now \u2014 it was sent it around by snail mail in letters).\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n
\n<\/span><\/p>\nThe One Word for Thinking Outside the Box<\/strong><\/h2>\n