Sometimes life feels like a puzzle that keeps changing designs. You get two pieces that fit together, then three, then four, and the puzzle design changes and now those pieces don’t fit anymore and new ones drop in. Your mindset and expectations influence how much you enjoy this morphing puzzle.
From a mindset that wants predictability, and expects to be able to ‘set it and forget it,’ the ever-changing dynamics of life can seem frustrating and unsafe, and even create beliefs around doing it ‘wrong.’ For example, if you hold the belief that getting it ‘right’ means that things stay ‘good’ then you can see how you might judge yourself for doing it ‘wrong’ when things change. Perhaps you can also see how an expectation of being able to control life dynamics can create a feeling of powerlessness when life goes ahead and changes when you don’t want it to.
Shifting mindsets to one that enjoys learning and experimentation, requires a few big realizations:
- Life changes all the time according to a larger puzzle design that no one person can possibly fathom.
- Your ideas about your life and how you like it to be are important, and completely trumped by the larger puzzle design.
- When life is ready to change the puzzle design, there’s nothing you can do to stop the change. You can choose to resist the change and suffer, or you can choose to embrace the change and learn.
- All changes that happen in the life puzzle are FOR you. Your job, should you choose to accept it, is to figure out how the change is helping you to grow.
If you can embrace these realizations, this ever-changing life puzzle can become a source of delight.
