Life Is a Puzzle

For the past 10 years or so, I was living in a constant state of alert. My mind was hyperactive, and I couldn’t sit still. I was always working. What I liked and enjoyed held no bearing on my direction, my life consisted completely of demanding myself to do things to attain some goal or achievement. 

I didn’t realize it at the time, but I was paranoid that everything I’ve worked so hard for would fall apart.

This ‘hustle mindset’ is normal, if not idolized, in today’s society. And by no means is putting your head down and getting sh*t handled a bad thing… not at all. I’m grateful for the work I put in.

That being said, there comes a plateau where you must learn new ways in order to reach new levels. You hit a wall. You can scramble all you want to get higher, but it seems like every time you reach for a rock, it comes loose. 

This is the point in which a new skill must be acquired to progress. The skill of faith.

Belief in oneself is phase #1 of becoming great, of that I am certain. Believing in myself propelled the first 10 years of my career - it made me chip away at all my edges until I became a work of art.

But phase #2 requires you to have faith in something greater than yourself. Something greater than you own will, determination, intelligence, or flexibility. 

The issue with only having faith in oneself, you see, is that sometimes, we are horribly wrong.

Humans are notorious for having bad judgment, especially of matters that relate to oneself. However, since our faith lies in ourself, we will always try to force a plan that we have created. This is why you feel stuck. You can have a detailed 10-year plan. You can have a great business idea. And you can still fail.

Faith will require you to give up what you think you need and want, for that which is meant for you. But to do that, you must admit that you do not know the best way forward. 

Consider that there is a working order to the world. And you are completely off-track. God is looking at you, watching you continuously run into the same wall, time and time again. He didn’t put the wall there to hurt you, he put it there to guide you.

And yet here you are, in quite a bit of pain. 

When you think life is unorganized chaos, you put way too much responsibility on yourself. You feel as though the reality of the situation doesn’t matter all that much. You don’t look for patterns, or “see what works.” You set your goal, and you run. The thinking here might look like, “If I try hard enough, I can do anything.” 

The problem is that, trying hard enough might be spending years and hours doing something wrong. If you knew there was a better way, if you knew there was a shorter path, why wouldn’t you take it? 

Your absolute trust in your own capabilities stems from a lack of trust in the world. You don’t think that things are meant to work out for you. Perhaps you had a rough childhood, and you felt like you always got the short end of the stick… whatever it is, you now believe the world is out to get you. So you run into brick walls because you think that you have no other choice. 

Your self-doubt that is creeping up on you is the ugly sister of self-aggrandizement. Start seeing things for what they are instead of seeing things the way you want them to be. 

All In Working Order

You, see, life is a puzzle. It’s not always an easy puzzle, but it’s meant to work out in the end. If a puzzle piece doesn’t fit, you don’t force it to (unless you are a psychopath of course). You simply try it somewhere else, or pick another piece. 

This is the same in your life. Try starting that business. If it doesn’t work, try another avenue in a similar field of work. No dice? Perhaps you have other skills, talents, or affinities that you are ignoring.

Once you remove your ego from the situation, and stop taking everything so personally, you realize that there are so many more options than you have considered. You have been thinking way too small. You had no idea the world intended for you to reach higher. 

The key to unlocking this mindset is faith. Have faith that the world wants things to work out for you.

Then you will know that there is a door that will open for you, and you will realize that every ‘no’ is simply a redirection that brings you closer to your ‘'yes.’

Then you will know that what you want to do is what you are supposed to do. This is part of the natural order of the world.

Of course this can’t be easily proven, so you would need some serious faith to test it for yourself, firsthand.

And it is for this reason that you are stuck.