One life, one choice: How waking up to our illusions reveals the true power we hold.

I sometimes imagine my life as a series of boxes. I used to believe these boxes provided a sense of security—a neat categorization of who I was and what my life looked like: the corporate box, the relationships box, the “I know what I’m doing” box.

If you had asked me back then, I would have said I’d chosen these boxes freely. I was an independent thinker, after all.  But the truth is, I hadn’t examined them very deeply at all. I simply existed inside them, accepting their boundaries as if they were facts of nature.

For a long time, I assumed that was normal—until I encountered the teachings of Rudá Iandé, creator of “Out of the Box,” who gave me a lens to see just how confined I actually was. It wasn’t that corporate life itself was evil. It’s that I never paused to ask whether I was living in alignment with what truly mattered to me.

Looking back, I can see echoes of Plato’s Allegory of the Cave: we’re all chained in front of flickering shadows, believing the projections on the wall to be reality.

Plato’s lesson is that freedom involves turning around, questioning the source of the shadows, and stumbling toward the light, even if it stings at first.

But that turning around, that willingness to admit we’ve been deceived—by culture, by institutions, by our own inertia—can be an uncomfortable and lonely process. We crave familiarity, so we often cling to the illusions we know best.

One reason “Out of the Box” resonated with me is that it challenges our unconscious assumptions about who we are and what we want.

Rudá Iandé offers a blend of philosophy, spirituality, and raw honesty—he doesn’t let you get away with easy excuses. In his teachings, there’s a recurring question: “Are you living someone else’s life, someone else’s narrative, without even realizing it?”

That simple question was jarring, because I had convinced myself that the corporate ladder, the promotions, the well-planned weekends—this was all a life I had chosen. Yet if I were honest, I’d never asked myself with any real depth: “Is this truly mine? What if I didn’t have to do it this way?”

Socrates, that grand provocateur of ancient Athens, famously declared, “The unexamined life is not worth living.”

As overused as this quote is, it remains potent because it hits on a fundamental truth: we have a responsibility to examine the structures in which we participate. Without that examination, we risk never really living.

We merely fulfill scripts handed to us by our parents, our schools, our bosses, or society at large. Corporate life can be one such script—convenient and well-rehearsed, it fits us like a suit tailored to someone else’s measurements.

But here’s what I realized: that script is perfectly okay if you consciously choose it.

Some people genuinely thrive in a corporate environment. They enjoy the team dynamics, the stability, the feeling of building something at scale. Or they see their job as a means to support the other areas of life they’re passionate about, such as family, travel, or creative hobbies.

The problem isn’t the script itself; the problem arises when you never realize you’re reading from one.

Rudá Iandé’s approach is about stepping “out of the box”—but not necessarily destroying the box entirely. You don’t have to cast aside every conventional path. It’s more about awareness: you see the box for what it is, you open the lid, and you step out to decide whether you want to climb back in or leave it behind.

The difference is that now it’s your choice. You’re not staying in the box because of fear or ignorance, but because you’ve determined it’s where you want to be at this stage of your life.

Of course, one of the biggest barriers to making a choice is that we often don’t realize we have one. If, like me, you’ve spent years immersed in performance reviews, workplace hierarchies, and carefully mapped career trajectories, it can seem like the only rational way to live.

“Everyone else is doing it,” we think. “Surely I should keep going.”

It’s exactly at that moment—the moment you catch yourself rationalizing your own stagnation—that teachings like “Out of the Box” can pierce through the fog.

What if the entire framework you’ve accepted as “reality” is just another cave wall with shadows dancing across it?

Historically, philosophers from Nietzsche to Kierkegaard have stressed the importance of individual authenticity.

Kierkegaard, an existentialist before the term was coined, believed that truth is subjective and tied to personal experience. In other words, what is deeply meaningful for one person might be meaningless for another.

If the corporate routine genuinely fuels your purpose, live it wholeheartedly. But if you’re going through the motions simply because it’s the accepted route, that’s a recipe for existential dread.

Nietzsche took it a step further with the concept of the “Übermensch,” urging individuals to transcend societal norms and create their own values. This doesn’t mean becoming a cold-hearted superhuman.

It means refusing to let social conventions or inherited belief systems dictate the entire shape of your life. It’s a call to imagination, to creativity, and to forging personal meaning. It’s about having the courage to say, “I see the illusions, I see the scripts—and I will choose my path regardless.”

For me, the leap toward self-awareness came unexpectedly one day when I realized that no matter how high I climbed on the corporate ladder, I still felt a gnawing dissatisfaction.

“Out of the Box” forced me to see that the dissatisfaction was an invitation rather than a problem to be solved by another promotion or perk. It was a signal from the deeper part of me that wanted to live more intentionally. Often, dissatisfaction is nothing more than our dormant authenticity rattling the cage, reminding us that we’ve got more living to do than we’re allowing ourselves.

Rudá Iandé frames this in a way that’s both blunt and compassionate. He’ll ask, “What are you avoiding by staying inside that box?”

The question might sting at first because it reveals how we often seek comfort over clarity. Maybe we’re avoiding risk or criticism. Maybe we’re avoiding responsibility—if we follow a prescribed path, we can blame the path if things go wrong.

Once you face that question honestly, you can see how the chains that bind you might be self-imposed. In a sense, you become your own ruler, your own authoritarian figure, telling yourself to stay in line. The external world doesn’t need to do much to keep you there.

But it’s not just about leaving a job, traveling the world, or starting a business. The illusions can run deeper: illusions about relationships, about our sense of self-worth, about what success or happiness truly look like. Maybe your “box” is a relationship that you’ve outgrown, or a set of assumptions about your capabilities.

Rudá’s teachings don’t narrowly focus on career decisions; they address the broader tapestry of our lives. Indeed, a corporate job could be just one thread in that tapestry, and you might find that you’re perfectly content with it if you also address other areas where you feel stuck.

So, if you suspect you’re asleep at the wheel, how do you start waking up?

One powerful tactic is self-inquiry. Journaling, meditation, honest dialogue with a mentor or friend—these can all help you see where you’ve surrendered your agency. Sometimes, it’s enough to ask one pointed question before bed and see what surfaces in the morning: “What do I truly want?” or “Where am I acting out of fear rather than choice?”

The second step is to recognize that you have a responsibility to make the most of this life. That might sound grandiose, but it aligns with the existentialist position that we are, ultimately, free to shape our realities. With freedom comes responsibility: if we do nothing with it, we have only ourselves to blame.

In “Out of the Box,” Rudá often speaks about the courage to bear this responsibility. That doesn’t mean you need to fix the entire world or become a hero overnight. It means you show up, day after day, with an awareness that your choices matter. You matter. And living on autopilot, by definition, negates that truth.

Finally, if you’re truly engaged in the process of waking up, you might realize that a major change is unavoidable. Perhaps you need to pivot careers, or adjust your living situation, or end a relationship that’s become toxic.

Those decisions can be terrifying, especially when you’ve invested time, money, and emotional energy into them. But consider the alternative: continuing down a path that you know, deep down, isn’t yours. That’s not just unfulfilling—it’s a slow act of self-abandonment.

The cost of ignoring your inner voice compounds over time, turning into regret years later. Still, it’s important to reiterate: that not everyone needs to leave the corporate world or blow up their life.

The real question is whether your life is truly your own. Socrates would say that if you’ve examined it and found it good, then live it out proudly.

Rudá would say that if you’re stuck inside a box, step out and decide whether you want to stay in it. Either way, the key is that you’re awake, and you recognize that you’re the one making the call.

The beauty of all this is that awakening doesn’t have to mean rebellion in the dramatic sense. It can also be an internal shift. You can remain in the same place physically but approach your work, your relationships, and your daily routines with a new sense of agency.

You might find new meaning in a corporate role if you use it as a platform for creative initiatives or for cultivating leadership styles that honor humanity over efficiency. You might stay right where you are but engage with life more passionately. And that’s still “out of the box,” because you’re no longer the unwitting actor in someone else’s script.

What Rudá Iandé helped me see is that “the box” isn’t external—it’s a mindset. It’s the set of beliefs, fears, and unchallenged assumptions that limit our view of what’s possible. Once you’ve brought those into the light, it doesn’t matter if you’re wearing a business suit or traveling barefoot across continents.

You’re free in the deepest sense of the word: free to choose, free to shape your life, free to be responsible for the fact that you’re here, alive, and capable of so much more than you might have been told.

So, here’s my own call to arms, borrowed from the insights I’ve gleaned from philosophers and from Rudá’s “Out of the Box”: Wake up. Dare to look behind the curtain. Ask if the life you’re living reflects the core of who you are.

And if you discover it doesn’t, take heart in knowing you still have time—time to change course, time to realign, time to live on purpose. No one else can define that purpose for you, and no one else can set you free. The gift and burden of being human is that the power to wake up is in your hands.

Yes, the world is full of illusions, but once you see them for what they are, you can choose to walk your own path. And that, ultimately, is what it means to live “out of the box.”