Reverse Engineering Your Perfect Life Puzzle

Recently, I was thinking that life is much like a puzzle. It really is in so many ways. You have all these similar but distinct pieces that you have to somehow put them together some kind of way. You hope to do that in a measured and timely manner. Although the fun is in the time well spent with family or friends. As far as putting these puzzles together, climbing Mount Everest or diving the depths of the Challenger Deep may seem much easier. No linear pathway but zig zag with lots of curves and bumps. Time and patience are your good friends in this endeavor.

I presume many of you may have played puzzles with 500 pieces,1000-pieces, 2000 pieces or more. Daunting for sure. The great news is before you buy the puzzle, you know what you are going to get as the picture on the box shows you what the final product should look like. Perhaps it is a cat, a ship, an airplane, historical figures or whatever it is. You know the end. There is no doubt what the puzzle will be when it is completed.

Of course, as an adult we don’t really know how our lives will turn out for sure. However, as a small child or in our teenage years we imagine in no uncertain details what our life puzzle will be for our lives. Somehow as we age our lives get a bit more complicated. Doubt or confusion sets in as to what direction we should take with our lives. One common thread between the effort in putting the puzzle together versus living our lives is that they are both exhilarating yet frustrating. Nevertheless, only one has a certain truth on the outcome. Only one is absolutely guaranteed to match our expectations with the end result.

In reference to my puzzle analogy, you pick up this first piece and then the second piece and so forth, and you have to fit it perfectly together. But, as previously stated, when you put the puzzle together, it's not so easily done. The mission concept is simple but the execution not so easy. We get frustrated just like life. Perhaps the certainty in building the puzzle makes it much more tolerable. Yet we still want to give up at times despite that certainty. Because you're not where you want to be, and things aren’t going your way, the idea of quitting comes to mind. Envision if you were on that puzzle box. What would it look like if it was your life, if it was you, your story? And look, take money out of the equation, take negativity out and ask yourself, what do you, desire? What if your life had absolute certainty but like the puzzle, struggle and challenges were an unavoidable piece of the puzzle?

Be true to thyself, what do you desire from life? What do you want? What do you want to be? What do you want to do with your life? How do you envision your life, five years, 10 years or 20 years from now? If you're a puzzle box, if you could just buy it off the shelf, let's say you could buy a one-year box, a five-year box what it would look like? Forget about roadblocks for a moment.

A lot of times we avoid being true to ourselves because of the difficulties and sacrifices involved. We take the easy way out because the certainty of excepting lower expectations is less painful and volatile. But if you want to lead a successful life, an intentional life, a dream life, you have to put yourself out there. Goals, objectives and dreams are real in our minds. Yes, failure is a possibility. You may miss one puzzle piece or two or four, but at least you'll be better off than not trying it all. Not trying may haunt you forever. It's important to try to do it. Think about your puzzle box. Once you get a vision, write it down or even better, record it visually. A picture is worth a thousand words. What you should do in my opinion is reverse engineering. Reverse engineer from Z (the expected outcome) back to A. You see the end result in your mind’s eye. Do a plan and work that plan, to take these little baby steps. So, your life puzzle fits neatly together. All hands-on deck, take time at this exercise. This exercise is your homework assignment.

More so than not we limit ourselves. This is an opportunity to have no limits as to your imagination. When you look at what the final product should be, like the puzzle box, you can take the next step to see what relevant path to get on. For example, let's name some occupations. Say you want to be a doctor. You're going to have to spend time in school for sure. No way around it. Do you want to be a general practitioner? Do you want to be a specialist? Because those are different pathways, right, they branch off in their different directions, different multiverses. So, you have to go to high school. You go to college. You need to go to medical school, right. Then you want to be a specialist. That's some more classes, specialist classes. It takes a while, and so there's a natural progression to be a doctor, to be a specialist, a brain surgeon, a neurosurgeon, whatever it may be. Same to be a lawyer and law school, same to be a businesswoman, same to be an owner of a retail store. There are pathways for everyone’s life puzzle. You just have to pick the right puzzle box that represents your story.

Now, if you change the picture on the puzzle box. You naturally have to change the puzzle pieces, so they'll fit together. This will result in an entirely new path and new steps to take to achieve the picture on your puzzle. It's important that you spend some up-front time to know what that picture is, to know what it is that's going on your box. If there's a piece of it missing, you must not give up, you just rearrange it, to make it fit. Occasionally, you don't know why it doesn't fit, but well, there's another piece we probably jammed in another place incorrectly. Basically, we changed direction on our future when a piece of the puzzle doesn’t quite fit. That said, it's important that you don't try to force something in your puzzle, your life puzzle, that doesn't fit, and you will know it doesn't feel right. You know, just like if you were doing an actual puzzle and you're trying to build the cat's ear, but no, that looks like a nose.

In your life, after you try something two or three times or more and still question if you made the right decision, then mostly if not you know the answer or conclusion. It is simply not the right piece of your puzzle. Bottomline, if something's not working, doesn’t feel right, then don't do it, move on to the next piece of the puzzle. You say, Michael, you make it sound so easy. It's easy up front, but once you start engaging in stuff that doesn't fit, it's a little more difficult, challenging, to get out of it. But just like the puzzle, what do you do?

As stated previously, you go on to another piece. If you decide to, let's say, be a lawyer, and then you find out you made a mistake and don't want to be a lawyer, it's okay. Change the puzzle box, get a new puzzle box with a new picture on it, the one that you envision, perhaps the second time. You know, sometimes we try things we thought we're going to like but it doesn’t turn out just right. Remember that expression grass is greener on the other side? Well, sometimes it is not green but black scorched Earth. What do you do? Then you readjust, you recalibrate, you reset, get you another puzzle box with a new picture on it.

What will make you content in this thing called life? Satisfied or successful? What will make you joyful and happy? Think about all those things. You want to be financially free. Draw on your puzzle box a financially free person. You want to travel, get married, you want to have babies, you want to invest, you want to do whatever it is you do. Whatever it is, get your puzzle box, get the picture on that puzzle box what that should look like for your life, and then all said and done, voila. The major point is do not give up. Keep on dreaming and taking action toward those dreams. I Hope you got something out of it this article. Remember to subscribe to Katalyst, my newsletter at https:// katalyst.beehiiv.com. Please share this article and newsletter with family and friends. Until next time, my friends.