These Christmas holidays, my boys decided to pull out the boxes of lego pieces that have been sitting in the cupboard in the spare room for quite a while.

My eldest son loved lego when he was younger and therefore we have quite a range of lego and tubs full of pieces.

The boys first put down a couple of fitted sheets on the family room floor and then poured a big tub of lego pieces onto the sheets. This is a trick they learnt from their Nanna. The clean-up is so much more efficient and easier when you only have to pick up a sheet and not a million individual pieces!

Since it was the holidays and we all had time, each one of us decided to build a different set. My youngest son had a badly build castle which he broke apart and rebuilt (smart boy; he didn’t have to find many pieces). My eldest decided to build 4 different sets at the same time and I chose to put together the Dragon Temple.

One lot of lego we sorted into colours. The bigger lots in one of the fitted sheets.

Now came the laborious part; finding the pieces pictured in the instruction booklet.

As I worked on building the Dragon Temple, piece by piece, over the next 3 days, I began to notice an interesting phenomenon. I needed a certain piece, for example, a flat black two. I would start searching through the lego pieces. At first, quite often, I would find flat black pieces 4, 3, 6, 8 etc. As I kept looking, I would find flat 2’s of different colours like red, yellow, white etc. With each find, my mind would sometimes tell me that it was too hard and I wasn’t going to find the piece. Depending on whether it was a relatively common piece or a rarer piece (according to me), I would sometimes buy into that and give up the search. If I was pretty sure I would find the piece, I would re-focus my mind on the piece and start to find black flat 2’s with various attachments like a little hook etc. Then sometimes my mind would start up again with doubts.
But I found if I kept searching, then voila, I would mostly find my piece. Then the process started over. Sometimes, I found pieces very quickly, sometimes I went through the process of finding similar pieces and then find my piece; and sometimes I didn’t find the piece.

When I couldn’t find it after a thorough search, I asked my boys to have a look with me. Quite often, they would find it for me. Other times, I left it and moved onto the next piece. I would find some of the missing pieces later while I was searching for other pieces.

As I was experiencing this search / find process, I started pondering:
When we want something in life, do we go through a similar process?
As we focus on what we want (a picture in our mind), and similar things start presenting themselves; if it isn’t quite what we wanted, we can sharpen our focus on what we do want and keep looking out for it.
When our mind starts presenting doubts, we can be aware of that and re-focus on what we want and keep looking.

After a certain time of putting back when things are presented that is not quite what we want; according to my theory; it is likely to come our way.

Then the questions started. How often do I give up on what I want in life the first time I get presented with something else?
Or when my mind throws up doubts that it’s too hard; I won’t get what I want etc.
When in my life have I actually kept my focus and kept looking until I was presented with what I wanted.
Sadly, the times I have given up are numerous.

It is time for me to apply my lego piece finding strategy in my life. Wish me luck!

Love & Light
Gabi