LEGO Life Lessons

I’ve been a huge fan of Lego for the past 35 years – from as long as I can remember when my dad was able to afford my first Lego building set - the Fire Station. I loved this set, played with it for weeks on end, and kept breaking it up and redoing it each time until I realised I could build different designs with the same set. And so I ended up making different buildings, vehicles and constructs – but they were always red (since the fire station was after all, red!). Then along came the world of Transformers and Godzilla - so my builds usually had Optimus Prime battling a very tiny rubber Godzilla in between red buildings.

The joy of Lego.

Fast forward many years into the future and I’m still an ardent Lego fan and now find much joy building them with our eight year old who never seems to follow the instruction manual and prefers doing a,“How about this dad?” ever so often. 

But looking past the tiny, colorful yet capable of agonising pain when stepped upon, I find myself staring at some real life simple lessons courtesy of these plastic bricks:

1. Mistakes do happen, and it’s okay to start again

Many times I’ve built halfway, only to realise that I missed a page which ultimately ends up in a huge blunder a few pages down the instruction manual. It gets very frustrating when you see that extra piece lying around and you try to figure out where it belongs - so you end up backtracking up many pages to finally spot the error and start dismantling the build just enough to fit that piece back in and voila, you’re back on track. It feels great after that as you continue on the build. Yes, you lose some time but it's much better than having to deal with a bigger mistake at the end! The key is to catch mistakes fast, admit that you’ve made a wrong move and get moving towards correcting things.

2. It’s normal to have extra pieces not used in the end

Every Lego enthusiast knows that once you finish with each bag, there’s always a few spare pieces (usually the smaller ones) left behind. Even if you know there are always extra, I always recheck to make sure I haven’t missed anything. And these extras go into a “spare container” which usually comes in handy in my next build where I can use some “extras” to make them look better. Just like any work or project that you do, you may end up with some bonus extras, which you find no use for in the current project or piece of work. It’s okay, as you can always use them in the next build, so save them!

3. It always looks impossible in the beginning!

Yes, each time I open a big Creator series box, I dread the number of bags and the number of (small) pieces each has. I will stare at the clock and wonder how many days or weeks will the build take (and when my wife will tell me to tidy up!). Whilst it always seems impossible at the beginning, it definitely gets a lot easier as I finish each bag. The feeling of completion is amazing, and gives a sense of euphoria that lingers till the final brick is placed. And looking at the end product gives an amazing satisfaction - I built that.

4. Don’t hang on to what you built, it doesn’t last forever.

This was the hardest lesson of them all.  When I completed building my different Lego sets, I would leave (in my mind, display!) them around the house. This as you can imagine, did not bode well with my mother and now the wife. It was always painful to break apart the build and put them back into boxes and storing them away. But guess what, I can bring them back out sometime later to do it again, and sometimes, it even looks better than the previous build ! My daughter does that all the time now. She builds amazing structures, breaks them apart the same day, and does it again the next day - and it looks better each time. Sometimes, other people will come build up what was dismantled or even improve on what you have built. That’s okay, it will only be better.

5. Creativity is addictive

This is so true! The more I go deeper into the Lego world, the more I think about what else I can do with it. It is great to see our very own brick wall on the 10th floor of our office changing regularly following different themes and each time, we think of ways of improving it. We even have a few bowls of these colourful bricks in our meeting rooms to spark joy! Imagine applying it to what we do every day, continuing with our creativity and challenging ourselves to do things different and better each time.

So when are you going to start building your own Lego “moments”?