Just the other day, I was celebrating a holiday with my beloved family, and helping my youngest brother with a puzzle. The puzzle had 1100 pieces and was rather difficult, but I enjoyed creating this masterpiece. As I was building the perimeter, in order to provide the two of us with a basis for completion, I began to think about how a puzzle is synonymous with our lives in more ways than many of you may have considered. In life, we have an unquantifiable number of experiences which take place, representing pieces to our puzzle, and with each of these pieces, we end up getting closer and closer to completing the puzzle and moving on to the next. I do not think that we have ONE puzzle for our entire life, but I do believe that each area of our lives has a puzzle, which represents a chapter in our existence.
Some of the pieces, or experiences, are used for the purposes of building the border for your life. These experiences are fairly basic, but provide a foundation for growth and a sense of security, while preparing you for what is to come. I spoke about this concept with one of my closest friends, and he said that the difference between a puzzle that you build, and the puzzle of your life, is that you do not have a cover to use as the guide in order to know what your puzzle should look like before starting. Although my friend is viewing this example from an extreme surface level, he does make a valid point because I do think that many of us struggle when it comes to creating an image to help direct us through life. It is almost like purchasing a puzzle in which the cover of the box is blank. We have no idea if we are building a castle, a village, or simply an ocean. We don’t know where to begin and many of us, may never even start. We look at this unknown puzzle with confusion, frustration, and maybe even a sense of fear.
The reason I am bringing this to your attention is because on the journey to BRANDENTITY you need to know what your puzzle will look like once completed. You need to picture yourself being, doing, and having an identity that you create for yourself as opposed to an identity that someone or something creates on your behalf. How will this feel? What would you do? And, ultimately, what will this look like?
What I encourage you to realize is that unlike a puzzle that you build, where the image on the box will be the image you create, the puzzle of your life will remain dynamic because as you acquire additional pieces, they may take you in a different direction than you imagined. The perfect example of this philosophy is my mother and stepfather. The two of these people epitomize what love is all about. Their union results in a relationship of growth, unconditional caring, and support. My mother was divorced for fifteen years, and had many men come in and out of her life, all of which provided her with a piece to her puzzle of love. But as time unfolded, her puzzle was completed and the image that appeared, was my step-father. If my mother did not place all of the pieces over the course of her life, then her puzzle would remain undone and she would still be on a quest for love.
Although I provided an example using the concept of relationships, this is true in all areas of your life; including your career, family, spirituality, health, and everything in between. With this being said, I must forewarn you that the acquisition of puzzle pieces will result in a variety of emotions such as happiness and sadness, excitement and fear, and clarity and frustration. But what you must keep in mind is that every experience contributes a piece to your puzzle of BRANDENTITY and once the puzzle begins to take form, you will finally realize what makes you…YOU!
So build the border, envision what your life will look like when living on your own terms, and take one piece at a time to find who you are and what you stand for…
What does your puzzle of life look like?
What does this mean to you? Please leave a comment.
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{ 16 comments… read them below or add one }
This is truly the building block of our lives. Our beliefs, values, and core definition of who we are determine the boundary of our puzzle. Every piece must fit within those boundaries. It is up to us to identify and enforce those boundaries so we can be in charge of our lives and manage the pieces as they appear. Thanks so much for this valuable lesson. I will pass it on.
I love the way you communicated the border of our personal puzzle because it is most certainly based on our beliefs and values. Once this is established, and the key is that WE establish it for ourselves, it is our responsibility to remain open and conscious when experiences take place because this is where our pieces will be born…
Thank you so much for all that you do and for sharing this message!
I really loved what you share using the pieces of a puzzle as the analogy of life. As you say, let the journey flow and the puzzle will take on a look of its own — the way the universe intended not necessarily how we expected.
I continue to say this — while you talk about all of the external relationships we have and how this analogy of the puzzle can be applied to all the different areas of our life – I see the puzzle as YOU – from within and the journey is the mirror of where you are at and how you live your life at that moment, as it is being reflected back to you.
Your mother took the time she needed to gather the puzzle pieces of love – what I see is that she was discovering, or remembering, who she is and want she wants and over time this clarity presented her with her mirror – her husband, your stepfather.
Every piece of the puzzle is necessary in this journey and rather than questioning or judging, let’s learn to accept it and truly be in the moment. As I am learning being in the moment is a feat in itself. I am gathering my puzzle pieces!
Thank you again for this article.
Sandra this is a wonderful interpretation. I especially enjoyed this concept:
“the journey is the mirror of where you are at and how you live your life at that moment, as it is being reflected back to you….”
This is so true because our puzzle is our reflection of who we are and what we stand for….
Therefore, thank you so much for sharing your words of wisdom as I always feel honored to receive your contributions….
Loved the article – having a well formed outcome is very similar to putting the border together and filling in the details – What so often happens in life is that as we start to fill in the middle of the puzzle we find that we need new borders, bigger borders, brighter borders because the borders can no longer contain the picture inside – what a wonderful journey life is when WE build OUR puzzle!!
This is an important point because far too many people begin building the interior of the puzzle without the direction of the border. The border represents our values and beliefs, but if we do not invest the time in discovering the WHO WE ARE, then we are living life without a foundation for growth. In order for the border to be born, we must take an introspective journey while remaining conscious regardless of the circumstances….
As always…thank you for all that you do Charles!
My puzzle is not nearly complete. I love working at it though, moving pieces around and determining where they will go. Sometimes I work from the edges and other times I like to dive right in and work from the inside out. It is funny that I never thought about my live as a puzzle until just now. I work on it to complete it and hope that is beautiful when it is finished. I sometimes have to dive right into my life and work on the issues on the inside and there are times when I just skirt around and work on the surface or the edges.
Thanks Jared, as always you make me think and apply.
Thank you for your transparency because like I mentioned in the interview from a few weeks back…the results you have seen are directly correlated with the level of honesty you have with yourself…!
This article is really a very interesting one and to add more and different spice to the view it presents: life is a puzzle but unlike the puzzle where the pieces are predefined and one picks and chooses them to fit into a cover , the pieces in real life puzzle themselves get defined by our own experience; Perhaps most of us are trying to experience/see the pieces and framing them into a conscious whole to know who we are or become what we want to. As We really dont know what that whole is, We can draw pleasure of uncovering and understanding each piece. But Let us not insist to understand but enjoy the piece; We possibly create pieces by choosing them but We really cant see beyond and have a limitation in creating them. There are black swans yet to be uncovered. Then the joy of life is that there are many of us trying to solve the life of puzzle. Thanks Dear Jared, You certainly gave us a good metaphor to see the puzzles of life and I loved the title of your post.
I love your interpretation of this philosophy and I want to focus my attention of one key distinction that was made:
“the pieces in real life puzzle themselves get defined by our own experience…”
This is the beauty of life because the unknown and the unexpected lead to the formation of our personal puzzles. We don’t have a box with a image on the cover to use as a template because life is an art and you have a clear canvas to work with….
@Jared – I love the metaphor. Isn’t it wonderful to know that we can never fully finish the puzzle – it is an infinite journey that constantly challenges us to be the very best that we can be and continue to learn, develop and grow. @Chuck – Quite agree – the Well Formed Outcome will certainly help to define where the current borders are limiting, restricting and confining the true person that we can become and then provide the next few pieces of the border to work on.
I am so happy that you enjoyed this article. Life is an infinite journey, which is also why we have a number of puzzles that will not necessarily be completed, but rather create even more clarity when a new piece is added….
Wonderful feedback!
Hi, Jared,
Nice analogy and very apropos.
I use a similar puzzle analogy in my book when I write about the Human Truth Puzzle. There is a puzzle that human after human has solved. The solution can never be communicated using words, because words are part of the problem. No one can solve the puzzle for another. Each of us simply has to do our own work on ourselves.
Once we put the puzzle together, we intimately know what lies inside the boundaries. We know how all the pieces fit together. We know we have solved the puzzle because everything fits. We can never know what lies outside those boundaries.
Warm regards,
Janet
Janet Smith Warfield
Ordinary words, extraordinary insights
Author of Shift: Change Your Words, Change Your World
AMAZON BEST SELLER
WINNER: 2008 Next Generation Indie Book Award for Best New Age Non-Fiction
http://wordsculptures.com
WINNER: 2008 COVR Best Website Award
Thank you for this share and I will make sure to purchase a cope of your book so that I can learn about the Human Truth Puzzle…
Jared, I liked your metaphor. Usually we start from the middle, hopping sometime we’ll end and touch the frontier. For “some chapters”, yes, we’ll have the chance. But I see each “chapter” as a next level of the puzzle with pieces build from each chapter. Like a new and high level of the life’s puzzle. And our life is around two digits. For this next level it makes sense to complete the frontiers, borders of the WIP pieces…of the our life’s chapters….and from time time, to come back and this low level and to loock for a small missing piece of initial “game”.
Life is a very complex puzzle. No two persons go through the same route. Sometimes the lady luck is on your side and you get rewarded for having done nothing while at other times you are just ignored after a great act. This is life and it must go on. There are certain natural forces that turn the events around you 360 degrees. If we all knew what is in store for us, we would all relax and do nothing. The unknown makes us go for it and thus we all try to put our efforts to achieve that something. I fully agree with Cdr Subhash that we should not insist to understand, but enjoy the piece. We must believe and accept what is in our destiny.