Life Lessons from a Puzzle

I've been putting together a puzzle for a few months. It's a 1000 piece puzzle with a lot of trees and grass-meaning it's difficult for me. I've already gotten an earful from some of my inside circle about what a waste of time a puzzle is-'you could be starting a business in the amount of time you're working on a puzzle'. I actually heard that comment and declined to respond regarding the commitment it takes to start a business. I disagree it's a waste of time. It's no different than any other activity requiring thoughtful solutions in the way it expands our brainpower, trains our thinking to create solutions to complex problems and potentially staves off afflictions of aging such as dementia and Alzheimers.

Puzzles also have some similarities to our lives if you think about it. Here are just a few:

1. It's difficult to put the pieces together 'correctly' if you don't have a picture of the final result. In life you're unlikely to have someone else provide the final picture for you but you can imagine the end result to create your best image.
2. Even with the final image it can be difficult to get the first few pieces fit into place. People use different tactics, first put together the border and then start to fill it in; start with sections and then start to piece them together . . . It can seem daunting to imagine ever getting it finished but the key is to start somewhere.
3. Sometimes the best thing to do is step away and come back to it later. I've found myself that it's less effective to spend hours staring at the pieces while the just become blurry than to walk away for a while. A few hours away and invariably within ten minutes of coming back to the puzzle a handful of pieces pop out that fit together. Mental breaks in life are important. Whatever your idea of downtime is take the time to slow down and let things clear up before starting again.
4. The more pieces of the puzzle you fit together the easier it is to fit in the remaining pieces.
5. Back to the starting a business comment. There are some similarities there too. You might have some family helping with the puzzle but for the most part you'll spend the alone time putting the pieces together with no one there to comment on how great your progress is or how excited they are to see the final piece. Unless, as my daughter told me, "if you could put that thing together in, like a minute or something you would probably be famous". True overnight success is rare.

There's the cardboard puzzle, where the pieces only really fit a certain way, and then there's life. In life, when we get to the end, all of the pieces will have fit together to create a final image of us. If we can imagine that final image before we get there we'll have a better chance of putting the pieces together in a way that creates the final us that we want to create.