Have you ever put a jig saw puzzle together? It doesn’t really matter to me if it was 10 pieces or 10,000 pieces. When all the pieces were in their correct places you had a picture. That’s just the way they work.
Now imagine looking at that picture, deciding you didn’t like it, and taking the whole thing apart. Maybe you liked a little part of the picture so you kept it together, but everything else was disassembled. Here’s the part where I get super ridiculous…
To get a new picture, one you think you’ll be happier with, you take all of the pieces you just tore apart and begin putting them back together. In fact, you try putting some of them together differently than you had them before. Same pieces, different places.
Seems silly doesn’t it? How on earth can we expect to get a different picture from the exact same pieces that formed a picture we didn’t like? We can’t.
Aside from my fascination with obscure analogies, why do I bring all of this up? Because I see people doing it every day with their lives.
I hear, “My life is a wreck and I can’t seem to get it together.”
When I get the chance to ask my patented, opening question, “What do you want your life to look like?” jigsaw puzzle problems come out.
“Well, I’d like my current business to be better and I want all of the things I’m doing now to work better together and I’d really like a relationship that tolerates it all.”
In other words, “I want all of the same stuff that makes my life a wreck right now, but I want it put together differently so that I can somehow have a different result.” Same pieces, different picture.
This happens because we combine a scarcity mentality with an improper approach to a better life.
Scarcity mentality tells us that what we have is all we’ll ever have. Therefore, whatever we want has to be built with the stuff on hand. Wrong.
The improper approach compounds the scarcity mentality by causing us to want to reshape our current picture instead of starting fresh and creating a picture of our full desire. Backward thinking.
Here are 4 tips to solve this jigsaw puzzle approach to life-change and maybe a small reality check to get some movement started.
1. Don’t tear the current picture apart. I know this seems counter-intuitive, but hang with me. Our whole concept here is to go some place new, a brand new picture. In order to go somewhere new we have to know where we are now. Your current picture serves as your starting point so keep it together for clarity.
2. Take a trip with no baggage. This might be the hardest and most rewarding part of life-change. We have to set aside our current circumstances and limitations to envision the way we want life to be. Just ask, “If I could build it from the ground up, what would I have in it?” Let yourself go and have fun with the possibilities.
3. Map out the trip. Now that you know where you want to go, use the current picture to begin mapping your steps. Don’t over complicate the process. If where I am is ‘A’ and where I want to go is ‘Z,’ my steps to get from A to Z are… you can do this.
4. Get started. This may be the most obvious, yet most overlooked step to life-change. Stacks of books and hours of seminars do nothing unless WE do something! If you’re at ‘A’ on your way to ‘Z,’ don’t get caught up in how you’ll take all the steps from T to W… take step B. One at a time gets you there.
If the pieces you are using right now don’t form the picture of life you want, you’ll need to change the pieces. Perhaps not all at once, but systematically, with a plan in front of you. This is not complicated, but it does require commitment. Is the picture you want worth the effort?
PJ McClure helps aspiring entrepreneurs to multi-million dollar business owners destroy roadblocks and seize opportunities to achieve their ideal vision of success. He is an award-winning speaker and the best-selling author of Flip the SWITCH: How to Turn On and Turn Up Your Mindset and Unlock Your Life: How to go beyond Time-Management to the Life of Your Dreams. You can download a copy of Flip the SWITCH for Free by clicking here.
I loved this PJ. I use a similar analogy about jigsaw pieces in gathering together all the jigsaw pieces of your life before you can see the bigger picture for what you were made for! We discard so many pieces because we don’t like them or they cause us pain, however, they are all what make us who we are with the innate understanding of our clients issues. Besides, that job that stuck out like a sore thumb often is the missing piece that brings a skill or understanding to our business that is critical to its success!!
Great article, PJ! Reminds me of a song from several years back, appropriately called “Pieces.” It’s about someone who’s trying to put the life puzzle together but doesn’t have all the pieces. This person goes to Jesus, who says, “I’ve got all the pieces to your life…I can put them back together again.” If we leave Him out of it, the picture will never be right–even if it looks right. Also thought of a puzzle my little nephew had. It was made of wood cubes; each cube had part of a different farm animal puzzle on it. The object was to figure out which pieces belonged to which picture (it made 6 different ones) and put them together correctly. Same puzzle, different pictures. So maybe our lives are kinda like that. If one picture doesn’t work or we want a change, we just turn the pieces to a new picture. Of course, we have to decide whether we want to turn our pig into a duck or cow (etc.) and be sure we have all the duck or cow (etc.) pieces in their right places…!