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Piecing It Together by Randi Levin



It’s time to play.

Your job is creative, analytical and thought provoking.

All you have to do is fit 1000 puzzle pieces together!

Jigsaw puzzles provide a quick and easy escape. They take us back to our childhood, ignite our imaginations and spark our curiosity. Like in life, we just want to find the solutions, make all the pieces fit, and connect and balance our lives and our goals. So what is it about all of those unconnected pieces that draws us in and makes us want to connect them? Piecing it together in play and in the real world teaches us some very valuable lessons.

Tenacity: The ability to stick with it should not be underestimated. Finishing what we start is not always so simple and takes perseverance, dedication and persistence. To best accomplish this, we need to practice detached involvement. This frees us to enjoy the experience of solving the puzzle by simply being passionate about what we are working on now without focusing solely on the final result. Let’s face it, looking at 1000 loose puzzle pieces and a picture on a box can be overwhelming. Or exhilarating!

Where do we start? How can we navigate through this process? If in solving a puzzle we concentrate only on finishing, we miss out on the joy of creating the big picture, of strategizing the different shapes and details, of learning and evolving as we go. If we rush toward our goals without experiencing all the steps that got us there, we don’t fully appreciate the many mini rewards along the way. Often, when people become stuck, they stop. They quit. Life is a puzzle…and it may not always be easy. Perfection is overrated!

Stick with the process; the end result will come.

Transformation: Puzzle solving is all about pattern recognition and shape and color identity. Everyone who solves a jigsaw puzzle attacks it from a different vantage point. Some of us solve from the outside in, some from the inside out. Many will not put any pieces together until they have attached the entire border, spending their first hours solving the puzzle engrossed in seeking out only pieces with one flat side that fits snugly into the perimeter of the picture. Still others will seek out small vignettes and color repeats to put together a series of unconnected stories, hoping to link them sooner than later to the master puzzle. Some will dwell on the one missing piece and others won’t concern themselves at all with the gapping holes yet to be solved.

Transformation is all about how we approach what is most uncomfortable to us. We all experience life from differing perspectives and points of view. Some of us embrace newness and some of us cling to what we know. It is common to over analyze the missing pieces in our lives rather than to appreciate all that we have. Most reinventions manifest from the outside inward much like how we may build a border, or the outside of a puzzle first. The inside of the puzzle and our own internal being involves harder work and awareness, leading to the most fulfillment and appreciation.

There are multiple paths that lead to the same end result, pick your unique path and look inward.

Facing The Unknown: Faced with no idea how to build a puzzle or understanding of what these hundreds of pieces represent, it would be easy to tell ourselves that it will take too long to solve, that we will never get it, that it is too hard to complete. We may feel that if we can put those pieces together, they can also come apart. That is scary. Those voices in our head shut us down before we even open the puzzle box. Sometimes, they may silence us in such a way that we never begin.

Those of us who are avid jigsaw puzzle solvers look at the prospect of the unknown links between the pieces as a challenge. We know that it is time consuming and that we may search for hours for that one last piece in a border. We know that we may make a mistake and link pieces that don’t actually fit together thinking that they do. We also know that in the end, we may not even like the picture, but we will have liked the journey of strategizing the game and we will have learned from it.

Open the box! Take out the pieces.

Take the first step.

Piece it together.

Solve some of the puzzle. Summer is the ideal time.

Enjoy the connection of each piece, the many small steps toward the larger picture!

~ Randi Levin, Certified Transitional Coach, mentor, writer and inspirational speaker, partners with her clients to define and navigate the many “acts or chapters” of their lives. She is a subject matter expert in the art of reinvention and it is her joy to unleash her client’s unlimited potential and to tap into what she calls, “the evolving business of you.” Contact RandiCLevin@gmail.com or 347-395-6255.

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