Legos can be fun. Individual building blocks that find their place from deep in our imagination. They can build many things that are quite different – from castles, to boats, to cars, to robots. Associated with children, how can legos be used as an analogy to creating one’s adult life?
As we look back, our lives are continuous and fluid. We navigate our days sometimes mindlessly out of habit and at other times pushed by the demands of our jobs or others. It always feels like our lives unfold like thread being pulled out from a spool. Continuous, linear, and easily seen.
These traits are consistent with the times in our lives when we live it with little intention. Not identifying our intent as to where we want to be in a week, a year or a decade. So deep into habit that we feel helpless in pushing through in a new direction. Where the passing of time always seems to race quickly without our notice.
Sometimes we happily live our lives this way. But for some there is a feeling of being uncomfortable that permeates their being at some point in their lives. They begin to want something more or different. Yet they feel helpless in not knowing how to get there.
As I have discovered intention, an increasingly powerful lever in my life in the last ten years, it far more resembles legos than a spool of thread (even if I had a needle). Intention has forced me to choose between two things multiple times each day:
Do what I normally do or do something meaningfully different today?
Different or new? In building a lego life, it involves different much more than something entirely new. It’s replacing something with something else. We are not talking about becoming a race car driver now that your nursing career no longer interests you.
Different involves making small changes. Instead of hanging around friends that are always negative, we begin to connect with friends who are very upbeat and positive. Instead of asking friends that you grew up with for business advice, you seek out more successful people to get advice from. Instead of putting up with your boyfriend, you decide to find a different one. Instead of selling one type of customer that won’t let you make any profit you find a different set of customers that will let you make a profit. And on and on………
Slowly, as you begin to add new pieces to your life, just like legos, a shape or direction will begin to form that will be additive with each piece added. Since you intentionally chose each different piece that you have added to your life (while shedding others) you will begin to experience traction, movement, and gain momentum in your life.
Once, you gain experience changing and adding different pieces to your life, you will begin to feel more in control, less rushed, and more fulfilled. Because you will begin to feel and see the place you intended to get to when you started this journey.
As you see, legos may be kids play but hides a valuable skill for each of us to learn.