Have you ever been puzzled by puzzles? Maybe it is time to shift your perspective.
I have a piece of a puzzle that’s been driving me out of my mind for days. I don’t know what’s happened but all of a sudden I’m interested in puzzles. I don’t know why. It’s kind of crazy and maybe I’m a glutton for punishment but this piece of puzzle drove me nuts for days. I looked at it and asked myself does it go here or here or here and finally, I figured out I didn’t know.
At some point, I picked it up and as I was looking at this puzzle piece, I moved around to the other side of the table and looked and said there it goes it fits right there because at that point I had the big picture in mind.
Where I was didn’t work. I needed to move to a different place have a different perspective and then the piece fit in. I define perspective in a couple of ways but one of them is perspective is a view of something from where I am. I’m sitting here and I look out on the world and I look into my life or people and I have a view or perspective of them. If I want a new perspective, I have to shift and be in a new place to get a different perspective.
Perspective is Important
What I needed to shift, in this case for a silly puzzle piece, was I needed to change the side on the table. It didn’t matter that I’d rotated it three or four times. I needed to be in a new place to look at it. Crazy. It’s absolutely crazy but it works and it works for us in so many ways. What is in our way about getting the next puzzle piece to fit for us whether it’s in our life and our relationships or in our work or our leadership or on our teams or wherever it is.
What perspective needs to shift is critical. You can ask yourself some questions and here’s a couple you can use: I wonder what else could be true right now, if I imagined a solution what would that look like, I wonder if… I’m just curious.
You start to ask questions from different spaces and places for many people. This may still be a little bit outside someone’s comfort zone and so many people need a coach, someone to come alongside them and ask those kinds of questions (and more) and help them connect the dots so they can see things.
You know it’s just a puzzle. It’s 1000 pieces (I think that’s kind of normal) and at the end, it makes this a pretty picture. Here’s the crazy part about puzzles.
Right at the end you crumple them all up and put them back in the box! Then next year you can pull them out and do them again. Puzzles have been fun and they stimulate your thinking and stimulate your brain. This piece of the puzzle made me think about perspective.
So, how’s your perspective?
Need to change the sides of the table?