I love jigsaw puzzles. They are a great metaphor for so many things.
Collecting the pieces: With a boxed puzzle, you start out with all the pieces of the puzzle. In life, you collect the pieces as you go.
Sorting the pieces: Start with the edges? Put the colors together? Look for distinctive features such as lines or words?
Looking for patterns: Colors are repeated throughout the picture. Have you ever thought a piece goes in one spot and it really belongs in a completely different place?
Making connections: Ironically, trying to make connections too soon doesn’t work so well. The pieces you need might still be in the great unsorted mass.
When everything looks the same: Which one is the right piece? I have even had puzzles where a piece fits in a spot, but it’s not the right piece. It connects perfectly on one side, but not the others. I’ve had to dismantle a section and rework it to get things in the right place.
All those grey areas: Just like life. What to do with those? But they hold the whole together.
When you don’t have the big picture: Sometimes I try to work a puzzle without looking at the picture on the box. In life, we never have the picture on the box. Sometimes we think it’s going to look a certain way and it turns out to surprise us.
The puzzle is always bigger than the box: “It’s bigger on the inside than the outside.” (C.S. Lewis)
Shout out to my friend Rhonda for the great puzzle
Puzzle Pieces Coaching 