Life is like a box of puzzle pieces...

Life is like a box of puzzle pieces.  Every piece represents an action we take, decision we make, experience we have, book we read, job we land, meeting we attend, relationship we’re in…you get the idea. When assembled, the individual pieces form the mosaic of our lives.

This image is up to us to construct. We need to have both the desire to listen to ourselves and the courage to act in order to assemble our pieces. It is my hope that the Five P’s—Picture, Plan, Purpose, Perseverance and Payoff—can help transform a bundle of puzzle pieces into a life lived on purpose.

The Picture

Would you sit down at the kitchen table to tackle a jigsaw puzzle without the box lid with the completed image propped-up in front of you? Most people wouldn’t dream of it, though some experts and others who like torturous challenges might.

When you wake in the morning, do you have a sense of what your actions are working in service of? How do the myriad items on your to-do list move you closer to the image of what you are working towards? If you don’t know how will you know you have made progress? We’re busy—everybody’s busy. How often have you been asked at the end of a long week what you did and had trouble answering? You know you did a lot. You combed through several dozen, if not hundreds of pieces. But how much of your picture did you complete?

Admittedly, you will never have as clear a picture as the poster that accompanies the store-bought puzzle. (What would the fun be in that?) Putting perfectionism aside, though, you can challenge yourself to ask if you have truly considered what you actually want to achieve? Have you envisioned what that may look like and does it represent something of great consequence to you? Well constructed homes begin with the architect’s blueprints. 

These questions kick-start the dialogue towards the creation of the images of your envisioned future, the visual representation of a goal or series of goals that are important to you—your puzzle’s picture. By envisioning the completed puzzle, or even part of it, you’ll have accomplished the first step in this journey. Without your destination plugged into the GPS, calculating the route poses a challenge. With the picture in mind, you can strategically sift through the puzzle pieces to start faithfully following your plan for how you will go about assembling your puzzle. The how adds a layer of intentionality, rigor and conviction to our daily actions.

The Plan

Place yourself in front of a metaphorical 1,000-piece puzzle. How do you tackle this task? Maybe you color coordinate the pieces. Maybe you start by assembling the border. Then you may focus on a particular section, for example, the yellow balloon in the lower right. Next week, perhaps you’ll tackle the section in the upper right. And at the end of each day and each week, you will see and know your progress. You will also know what approach works for you and what does not. When you start out with the image, even if it’s fuzzy and incomplete (as it often is in life), the plan pens itself, detailing the how, showing you the way. 

Purpose

“Purpose” can be an emotionally charged word that seems too big to wrangle. It’s not. When you have a sense of what you want to work towards – the image – and why it matters, you can take action against your plan to achieve it. And now there is additional meaning and purpose behind the actions you take — as you are working in service of something larger.

For the aspiring-marathoner, the rich image of hanging-up a finish-line photo with her arms around her family will infuse each day—each training run—with a greater sense of purpose. She wants to assemble a few more of those pieces to inch closer to that image in her head and the photo on the wall. (Even better, she can print the image onto her Game Plan, laminate it, so she can check in with it each day.)

Perseverance

Life happens. Setbacks occur. Friction points arise—just look at what’s happening in the world around us. To maintain forward momentum you need to be able to bounce back. Resiliency and perseverance—require that we maintain focus on the image and remind ourselves why it matters. The combination of revisiting what and why propels us through the obstacles that will undoubtedly arise.

Your images may even need to be altered. The marathon may have been canceled. She is devastated and rightfully so. When ready, she can ask herself: What else is possible? What can I do instead? The image can—and should—indeed change. Perhaps her big, city-wide race day becomes a 26.2-mile solo run, with friends planted along the way and a big brunch at the end—a different, yet still meaningful race and celebration.  To reimagine the image, she must return to why running the marathon was important. The why forms a solid foundation upon which several different types of houses can be built. As quickly as she redraws the image of what she is working towards, she can get back to her training runs with intentionality, once again infusing that purpose into the process.

The Payoff

The plan provides the purpose for the process, empowering you to persevere over, through and around obstacles. And now, you get to experience the exhilaration of placing that last puzzle piece and seeing the entire image, which forms the facsimile of the box art. Sticking with this metaphor for life, this completed image—this completed goal—becomes part of the larger, infinite puzzle of your life.  While the unknowns and uncontrollables are everywhere, focusing on what you want and trying (hard) to understand why it matters and what it means to you, allows you to sketch the picture, which informs your game plan for each day. Executing your Plan, you will act with intention, with conviction and with purpose.

So, when someone asks you what you did today, you will know. You will know what it looks like. And you will know what you want to do tomorrow. And the day after that.  The more pieces you add, the more your image comes into focus.

Founder and Head Coach, Matt Spielman, draws upon decades of senior executive operating experience at large, public organizations and younger VC/PE-backed firms. He holds an MBA from the Harvard Business School and completed the Executive and Organizational Coaching Program at Columbia University. Matt is also a Health & Well-Being Coach trained at Duke School of Integrative Medicine.