Prioritizing The Puzzle

Part I: Personal Puzzle

The world's largest puzzle was created by The University of Economics Ho Chi Minh City in 2011. The puzzle was made up of 551,232 pieces and took 1,600 students 17 hours to complete. The final size of the puzzle was 48 ft 8.64 in x 76 ft 1.38 in.

If you took pause when reading the above puzzle was completed in only 17 hours; great!

Had the pieces not been pre-packaged into 800 sections of 170 pieces each and given to 800 groups of two, it would have taken a lifetime to complete.

If you are doing life right, your personal puzzle will take a lifetime to complete.

You are being pieced together over time. You will grow and transform your entire life, being shaped by your values & beliefs, your strengths & weaknesses, your emotions, your life experiences, and your relationships.

Every decision you make will result in a consequence. Sometimes your decisions will yield positive consequences, sometimes negative. However, even the negative consequences do not necessarily equate to a poor decision. Zen Shorts by Jon J. Muth is a great resource to explore this concept (yes I know it is a children's book; children's books are for any age).

Ultimately, every decision and every consequence offer an opportunity for personal progress and personal progress will come more naturally to those who are self-aware.

Self-Awareness

Self-awareness is your ability to know yourself truly, to understand & accept your feelings and emotions, to understand where those feelings and emotions came from, and to learn from them, seeking better results in the future.

Travis Bradberry & Jean Greaves share in Emotional Intelligence 2.0, "Self-awareness is so important for job performance that 83% of people high in self-awareness are top performers, and just 2% of bottom performers are high in self-awareness."

You may be breathing a sigh of relief right now because, regardless of where you fall on the man-made corporate ladder, you know you are strong in self-awareness. Being high in self-awareness will give you a leg up and create an expedited path to leadership.

Hold that thought...

According to Tasha Eurich 95% of us would say that we are self-aware. In reality only 10-15% of us actually are. So, get an objective opinion about whether you are self-aware and if not, start digging into that a bit.

What does all of this have to do with your personal puzzle?

Personal Puzzle

Maybe you are busy organizing and categorizing all of your pieces. You might be shuffling pieces around to create balance in your life. Maybe you believe the right groups of pieces will bring about swift and flawless execution.

Alternatively, you may be quick to take action, overlook organization, waste months or years trying to squeeze a piece in that looks like it should fit, when you finally realize you had the wrong piece the entire time.

Finally, you may be under the illusion that you can actually complete your puzzle. Accepting that your personal puzzle is a constant, dynamic, and never-ending process can relieve the pressure of completion you're striving for.

Unfortunately, our puzzle pieces are not going to be given to us in pre-organized and identified sections like the students in Ho Chi Minh City. We are not given all our pieces up front. We are not even provided a picture of the end result!

But think about it, is this really unfortunate?

Being given any of the aforementioned provisions would rob us of our personal journey and impact along the way. I have just finished reading The Giver Quartet by Lois Lowry (great to read with your middle age children). Book I: The Giver, shares about a community whose puzzles are all pre-ordained for them. The characters never know ambition, passion, or love.

The uncertainty and the disruptions of life can be disheartening, but they are also reminders of our humanity. Lacking certainty pushes us to pursue possibility and disruptions lead to new discoveries.

While I care about your personal growth, I am more interested in how your personal growth will impact the world. Who you are matters, but how you impact the world matters more!

Your impact has happened, is happening, will happen; whether it is a positive impact or negative impact is up to you. If you do not spend time prioritizing your personal puzzle it will not only be to the detriment of yourself but also to the detriment of the world.