5 lessons I learned from a 1000 piece puzzle

About 7 years ago I bought a puzzle for £10 just to buy something. I was feeling crappy and thought the exchange of £10 for some kind of activity would make me feel better.

I didn't open the puzzle until March this year, 6 weeks ago to be exact. As part of my Realignment/Happy Empire, I cancelled my Sky subscription in October last year and pretty much only watched shows online occasionally, I then decided that my living room which is entirely steered towards the television should probably be moved around, so the TV now faces the back of my sofa leaving me with so much more living room space than I thought possible.

The question I then had was, how do I entertain my nieces when they came over for Apple Pie day? (that's a thing, we've been doing it for years - one supplies a new found apple pie and we compare it against the last one to the last bite - it's a worthwhile endeavour).
Roll up the 1000 piece puzzle that's been holding place in my suitcase for years.

I don't think it looked immediately enticing to 'play' but after a while we really got into it; when they left that night we had small handful's of sections but the pieces were high level sorted. As I now had so much living room space - still enough to leave my yoga mat out - I decided to continue the puzzle, 30 minutes here or there just to see if I could do it.

These are the 5 lessons I learned from the 1000 piece puzzle

1. Doing something to cheer me up is never as enjoyable is being happy and then doing something. I learned this quickly. I don't mean happy ecstatic, just that steady open feeling. When I tried finding pieces when I was in a bad mood, I was lucky to get 3 or 4 pieces in the space of 30 minutes, compared to a good 20 pieces in 10 minutes - I was on a role when I was in a good mood.
2. Frustration blinds you. All the way through from the beginning until maybe the day before the end, I nearly always said at some point "that piece has to be missing, I've tried everything, there aren't enough pieces left to fill that gap" I was always wrong.
3. Perspective is everything. At the beginning when I had a lot of pieces, I laid them out on the floor rather than in the box, and when I really just couldn't see anything, I shuffled the pieces around like domino's. It always helped, but not even necessarily for the piece I was looking for right then, more often that not I'd find a bunch of pieces in one go for an entirely different section.
4. The mind will go on regardless. From my knowledge of the mind, I know it doesn't like gaps, it likes to figure things out and create patterns so that it can be more efficient. I really understood this when - I would have just looked up from my book, or breakfast or dinner, or walked past to get to the tumble dryer - I'd glance down and would immediately see a piece and knew exactly where it went, I wasn't thinking about it at all, on some occasions I hadn't touched it in days. This happened with such frequency I laughed each and every time.
5. You can only do so much in a space of time and be useful. It couldn't be rushed, on some sections when it got really hard, I started to think I was just obviously dumb, that I couldn't find a piece, after all the more you do, the less pieces there are to choose from. But I wasn't dumb, I'd just been looking at it too long or was just in the wrong head space, I needed time away so that my mind could figure it out without my brain getting in the way.

It has to be said, I intellectually knew all of these things before, but the slow and steady reminder was definitely appreciated. I'll remember this time.