The Ultimate Success/Fulfillment Tool

Relationships & helping others amplify your life

Applying a presence/self-reflection cycle to your days grows your success, impact, and complexity of your life. It grows your puzzle.

It’s not really possible, that I can tell, to grow your own puzzle without touching others - without impacting them in some way. Every person you’ve ever interacted with is part of your puzzle and you’re part of theirs. Have you ever had an experience where you run into someone you hadn’t seen in years, only met briefly, and now they’re in front of you again and are a part of your life? In the end, it’s a small world.

When two people work on something together, they can achieve more than either one of them could possibly achieve alone. They don’t always, but they can. Even individual skills, like swimming or a specialized doctor, are mastered better and faster with a coach or mentor.

When a group works around a shared vision, that’s when magic happens. Groups working on shared visions are what have built skyscrapers, the internet, and now a boom in Artificial Intelligence.

Translating to The Puzzle when two or more people work on a puzzle piece, a shared vision, that piece can become much bigger than either one of them working on it alone. And it’s in both of their Puzzles. It’s a connection point and their contributions, their individual pieces, cannot be separated. Only together do they form that piece.

In my original vision these pieces were actually thicker and bigger when shared. Here’s the story of the vision. There was so much happening and so much info flooding my brain during the vision but the thing that stuck out as the unifying concept…basically the reason for the whole thing, was helping others & collaborating. Building shared Puzzles, in the end, is the most important activity to find a life that fulfills us; to find meaning. Some find meaning in the help itself. For the rest of us being a part of a much larger shared puzzle is more fulfilling than building our own small one.

If you work on something together and never meet again that piece is still accessible and still bigger with more opportunities for more connections at it’s edges than individual pieces. It may fade over time, but if it’s revisited it could be more impactful than revisiting your own pieces. If you work together on pieces for long-term, like a marriage or business partnership, it gets harder to tell who contributed what and the pieces are as one. The pieces are no longer your two pieces put together, you forget how to make the piece on your own cause you’ve been making them together for so long. This is when Puzzles merge.

The best way to help others with their Puzzle is to use one of your pieces - a skill you’ve built or knowledge you’ve gained - in their Puzzle. Helping in ways that is not natural or easy for you is of course possible, but it won’t have the impact of something close to you. Your piece will always be a part of their Puzzle and their life. Whether or not they show gratitude, the energy of their work will always have a part of you in it. Their puzzle would not be what it is if you hadn’t put that piece in. They might still be scrambling for a piece that goes there or they’ve moved on and their Puzzle is incomplete.

And that impact, that energy, somehow makes every piece you place for yourself a little bigger and more complex. The best thing you can do to grow your own Puzzle, in the long-term, is find other people who have complimentary pieces that you can use together to build that shared Puzzle. To find that you must first place your pieces in others’ Puzzles. Placing pieces for others enriches your own pieces. It makes them more colorful and it helps you define them better. Using your skills to help others not only builds that skill, but gives you a deeper understanding of the skill because you used it in a novel way - for someone else.

Now, of course, there are always bad actors and people who take and take and take pieces and build their puzzle with everyone else’s pieces and stand up to say they did it all themselves. That’s gonna happen. I guess I’d say avoid helping them. :P But most people, because it’s in our DNA, will seek to return the help. Most people will keep you in mind and be eager to help you at some point down the road. And that’s the other magic of helping others - help for you…out there…waiting for you to need it.

I have been told I’m too generous with my time, too nice, too trusting. I have served on non-profit boards for my entire career, I spend at least two hours a week mentoring people, I freely share stories and experiences with any group that will listen, I give 20%+ of any windfall to charity. And indeed I’ve been taken advantage of a lot. I’ve lost huge sums (to me) to scams and over-optimism. But I feel like I have a lot to give, I’ve always had an abundance mindset (though I’ve never read the book). I always respond that I’d rather be too trusting and be taken advantage of occasionally than be too suspicious and miss out on potentially amazing opportunities.

Sometimes, when things are going poorly, I temporarily regret many of the above activities. I’m human. I’ve been on the verge of bankruptcy multiple times. I’ve had more debt than assets for a fair chunk of my career. When that happens, after I freak the fuck out, I take a look inside and find gratitude for the things around me. I chop wood and carry water. And sometimes help shows up from unexpected places. Sometimes, when I really need it, things just start falling into place.

And so I keep giving. I keep helping. I keep looking for ways my Puzzle pieces can fit in others’ Puzzles and help them. It is the only magic I’ll ever need.

Presence/self-reflection for daily success. Collaboration & servant leadership for long-term success.