Have you ever watched the show Burn Notice? It’s a USA show about a burned spy’s adventures. It featured a fantastic cast, great friendships, lots of C4, a slow burn romance, strong female characters, and a man who loves and respects his mom.

The Chaplain and I binged through Burn Notice a few years ago, and it’s remained the stick by which we measure all the shows we watch.

A prevailing theme in the show was that the protagonist would be presented with a job that sounded impossible. He would then come up with an elaborate and risky plan that would only work if everything went right.

As he ate a spoonful of blueberry yogurt from the ancient fridge in the converted warehouse he called home, he’d say, “It’s the only way.”

It was such a predictable line that it became an inside joke at our house, and we still laugh when another show or movie uses some version of the line at a tense moment as the characters try to scheme their way out of catastrophe.

That it became a trope for us was a gift. Through our own crises, as we work through our options, we’ll catch ourselves in a thought tunnel with just one exit. We’ll say, tongue in cheek, “It’s the only way.”

Acknowledging that we feel stuck helps us to look up and around again with fresh eyes, eyes that remind us there’s almost never only one way to solve a problem.

We might not like the other options, but when we corner ourselves into believing there is only one way out, we limit ourselves to a world of possibility.

Have you ever caught yourself doing this? Putting yourself in a box when there are more options to consider?

When we stay curious with the idea that anything is possible – just the opposite of It’s The Only Way – often our brains will take a short cut around limited thinking and come up with creative solutions.

I got my DSLR camera back out of quarantine, and after listening to this episode of the Ologies podcast, I took up macro photography. The photo above is purple sedum, one of my favorite perennials.