How many of you out there remember putting puzzles together as a kid? Do you remember your first puzzle? Do you remember what it felt like to try this new daunting task for the first time? The first time you tried to put one together it was probably pretty difficult. You had a bunch of big pieces that had to fit together the right way in order to produce a picture. Finding which piece went with another piece took skill. Fortunately, with the more puzzles you put together, the more you were able to become better at puzzle building. You learned that you couldn’t force pieces together. You knew what corner pieces and edge pieces looked like, and then you could recognize that puzzle pieces that had similar colors probably went together. You learned all the rules to putting puzzles together, and then before you knew it you were able to replicate a beautiful image just by fitting a few puzzle pieces together.

And just because we’re no longer kids doesn’t mean that some of us still don’t find the urge to put together puzzles as adults. A few months ago my sister and I tried to put a puzzle together, and it definitely wasn’t easy. The puzzles that we put together as kids had pretty big pieces, but unlike the puzzles that we did all those many years ago, this puzzle had hundreds of tiny pieces. Needless to say, we felt like we were little kids again discovering how to put a puzzle together. All of the same rules applied, but with all of those little pieces to put together, we felt like we were tackling our first puzzle again. After we found all of the edge pieces, we had to tackle the middle part, which was very difficult. We tried fitting the pieces together the best we could, but after an hour of trying to construct a puzzle we started to become a bit haphazard with our puzzling techniques.

Even though we knew that pieces didn’t fit together we tried forcing them together in a frivolous attempt to finish the puzzle.

We were desperate so we tried any tactic we could think of to get to our end goal. Sometimes in stressful situations we want to do whatever it takes to get what we want even if we know deep down inside that what we’re doing isn’t going to do us any good. We just want to try something or anything that might help us.

The thing is positive thinker that trying things for the sake of trying things doesn’t always end up working out. If you find yourself in a desperate situation you shouldn’t try and force things to happen just so that you can say that you’re “trying something.” Things aren’t always meant to go together. And when you find things that aren’t meant to go together you shouldn’t try to force them together. Forcing two things together that aren’t meant to be together is only going to make the situation worse and it definitely won’t get you to the goal that you desire. So then why try to force it? My sister and I tried forcing puzzle pieces together and it didn’t do us any good because they weren’t met to go together. Puzzling doesn’t even have a big influence in your life and us trying to fit puzzle pieces together ended up being more trouble than it was worth. If our puzzling could become stressful, can you imagine what forcing two important things that aren’t meant to be together can end up doing to your life…?

When you try and force a relationship between two people that are completely incompatible you’re only going to cause heartache for yourself and the other people around you…

When you try and force yourself to stay at a job that you hate then you’re only going to cause yourself pain and your work is going to suffer because of it…

When you try and force yourself to stay in a city that you hate you’re only going to cause yourself unhappiness…

When you try to have a personality that doesn’t fit with your own personality then you’re only going to cause yourself stress…

Positive thinker, don’t cause yourself unnecessary heartache, pain, unhappiness, and stress. Don’t try and force things together in your life that weren’t meant to go together. Not all the pieces are meant to fit.

Life is just like a puzzle, so take the time to find the pieces that fit together and you’ll end up with something beautiful.