Things you can learn from doing jigsaw puzzles

A Blog by Chicken Wrangler Sara

One way I “water” my soul in the summer is by working jigsaw puzzles. We used to spend a couple of weeks in Colorado each summer and I would do a puzzle a day.

I miss those days – especially the cooler weather.

I even blogged about the lessons I learned while doing jigsaw puzzles.

1. Consider results carefully before making a decision.
2. Sometimes the only way to know if something works is to try it.
3. Keep trying until you find what works.
4. When things aren’t going right, it may mean backing up to see where things went wrong to begin with. Then make it right and move ahead.

A piano student recently gave me a couple of jigsaw puzzles, and I dedicated an entire weekend to complete one of them. It was a chicken puzzle of 1000 pieces and was quite a challenge as I am out of practice.

As I was working, I thought of some different things to learn about life from jigsaw puzzles.

• Sometimes you have to focus on one section at a time. The whole picture is overwhelming but each chicken is more doable. So is one day at a time.
• It helps to walk away and come back with a fresh perspective. (That works a lot better than dumping the whole thing over in frustration.)
• Life doesn’t have to be perfect. If you look closely, you will see that there are two pieces missing. At one point I would have considered the puzzle worthless and thrown it away. Now I can look at the whole picture and see the beautiful chickens without getting hijacked by the missing pieces.

Perhaps these insights come from two years of earth-shattering events. What might be considered catastrophes have taught me some valuable lessons. It just took sitting still at a jigsaw puzzle to see them.