Hello, and welcome to another episode of the Choosing Happy podcast. I'm your host, Heather Masters. And on today's show, we're going to explore how looking at life from different perspectives can bring you more joy, more happiness. meaning and happiness. And we're going to use some metaphors around jigsaws and Scrabble to illustrate this concept in a fun and insightful way. So I invite you to subscribe, to like, and to join me. And this week's Choosing Happy Podcast. Hello and welcome to this week's Choosing Happy Podcast. I'm Heather Masters. Life can often feel like a giant unsolved jigsaw puzzle. Especially when it sometimes feels out of your control. When we look at everything that's happening in the world, all of the pieces of the puzzle flying and changing and shifting each day, it can really feel like a struggle. But one of the real key things that I remember When I think about all of this, it's that every piece of the puzzle counts. So even if you feel like you're a piece of sky that's insignificant and no one's bothered with, actually, you're a piece of the puzzle and the puzzle cannot be completed without you taking part. And sometimes it seems like we're given all these random pieces. We're given the circumstances, relationships, opportunities, challenges in our lives, and we have to figure out how to put together our part of the puzzle into a coherent picture. But here's the thing, if we only look at those puzzle pieces one way, we can get frustrated, We can get annoyed trying to make them fit. Often, the universe has a bigger picture in mind. So, we're only laying the foundations for a new part of the puzzle to fall into place. And sometimes when we turn around those pieces that we're struggling with, We see that they actually fit perfectly for a picture that we just hadn't seen yet. So, being able to see things from a different angle, or a perspective, suddenly the connections become clear. And I love to remember that the universe, the creator, the creator. Whatever you call it, always has my highest interest in mind. This is all a journey towards my destiny, my higher purpose. So, sometimes when pieces that seemed hopelessly mismatched, they can suddenly start interlocking perfectly. And that's a gift of hindsight. The gift of looking back and joining the dots. The same is true for other puzzles that life throws our way. By shifting our viewpoint, say for your business, we can find meaning, lessons, and even unexpected gifts in the most challenging and difficult situations. So maybe you didn't land that client, but you were really pinning your hopes on And yet, there's a better one around the corner, and you couldn't have signed with them if you'd signed that first one. Maybe you didn't buy the house, that dream home you were after, and yet there's another one around the corner, which is even better, in an even better location, and is perfect for you and your family. What once looked like a hopeless jumble starts coming together in a beautiful way when we adjust our lens, adjust our expectations and allow life to show us the way. Another great analogy for this concept is the game of Scrabble, and we're dealt a random bunch of letter tiles. Some players might look and see only the limitations. You know, you might say, I can't make anything, any good words with these letters. But the skilful Scrabble player sees the possibilities. They find ways to creatively combine and rearrange those letters. into high scoring words. Not just the ones that are already on the tiles, but they look at the big picture. If you like, they look at the jigsaw, they look at the scrabble board, and they know where just adding one The low scoring letter can create a massive high score with what's already been played. And in life, we can't always control the circumstances and challenges that get tossed our way any more than we can pick the letters we're given in the Scrabble game. But we can decide how we make use of them. We can decide that. Okay, this one random letter, maybe I've been landed with the Z. Yeah, what am I supposed to do with that? But if I look at what's actually around me, what's available to me, where in my life I can add that Z to compound the results. That's especially true in business. When we think about when everyone went into lockdowns, businesses had to really think laterally to come up with new and innovative ways. If there's something that's happened over the last two, three years, it's the amount of innovation. The new types of businesses, the new ways of doing business, the new ways of marketing, the additions to existing businesses to make them work online and remotely that were never there before. So what can you do with the letters that you hold in your hand, either in your business or your life, to create new combinations and craft something new, interesting? and high scoring. The happiest people are the ones who approach life's letters and jigsaws with creativity, openness, and a willingness to spell out fresh perspectives. They don't get flustered by seemingly random tiles or random things that the universe sends their way, but they see them as opportunities Possibilities and the gift of having a chance for novel thinking, for thinking out of the box, for disrupting. How can we start looking at life's jigsaws and scrabble racks in a new way? Here are a few suggestions. Question your assumptions. Question how you're looking at the world. The lens we view the world through is largely shaped by our beliefs, our values, our experiences and habits of thought. But those can distort reality or cause us to miss important details. They can limit what we see. Regularly questioning your assumptions about people, situations, and yourself can reveal new angles and new possibilities. Seek out viewpoints. Make it a point to have conversations with people from different backgrounds, cultures, walks of life. People with different opinions who cause you to question, to examine, to explore. The way they see the world can expose you to new perspectives you'd never consider on your own. Change your routine. Routines are psychological lenses that can keep us stuck in a narrow way of perceiving things. So, switch up your daily patterns. Take a new route. Visit an unfamiliar place or try a new hobby. These different experiences can shake up your viewpoint and even introduce you to new synchronicities. Reframe challenges. As I said earlier, rather than reflexively seeing obstacles as negative, reframe them as opportunities to innovate, grow, or re evaluate your approach. Remember that. There's a great perspective on seeing the universe. It's always for me. So what are the lessons and insights you can gain? By looking at this challenge from a different angle or perspective. Practice gratitude. This one's always there. When we appreciate the small, positive details in our lives, it helps us see the bigger picture in a more balanced, optimistic light. Gratitude and appreciation gives us a lens of abundance rather than lack and can shift the way that we see things. That can show us the opportunities and possibilities that we may not be able to see from a limited perspective. And finally, the one I started with. Remember that you're an important piece of the puzzle. You're an important letter on the Scrabble board. You're an important piece of the jigsaw. The world is never complete without you in it. And God, Creator, Universe never makes mistakes. You're as important as any other piece of the jigsaw from the Creator's perspective. And the bottom line is that our level of happiness is greatly impacted by the lens we choose to view the world. And being able to put on a new pair of glasses to adjust our perspective and start looking for the possibilities, the opportunities, the different ways of doing things, maybe the possibility to disrupt can always bring everything into a clear, more exciting, more interesting and vibrant focus for us. So take a moment to really look for the connections, the unexpected meanings, lessons, or even gifts hidden within our challenges. Approach obstacles with an open, creative mindset instead of getting stuck in one rigid perspective. I hope you found this helpful. And I look forward to seeing you again next week. Thank you so much for taking the time to listen to this week's episode. If you enjoyed it or think it would be valuable to others, please do share. And if you really enjoyed it, please leave me a review. It really helps the podcast. All of the links are in the show notes and I look forward to seeing you next week on the Choosing Happy podcast.