Mindful Solutions

One of my favorite things to do while I’m working out at the gym, waiting for an appointment, or otherwise just trying to fill time is to solve puzzles. I pull out the latest issue of Variety Puzzles and a freshly-sharpened pencil and get to work, solving everything from find-a-words to crosswords. Anything word-related, I’m in. I love picking up a fresh new copy of a puzzle magazine and getting started.

Solving puzzles can be a kind of meditative practice.

Source: Vivian Wagner

There’s something about these puzzles, I find, that makes me happy. I might work for days on a single Syllacrostic, thinking about possibilities and occasionally searching for solutions when I’m really stuck. After finishing a particular puzzle, I put a star and the date in the top corner of the page, proud of my small accomplishment and the process of reaching it.

Not all problems are so easily-solved or managed, and there’s something lovely about the contained problems presented by puzzles. The puzzle draws a line around its problems and says, focus here. Here’s where your attention needs to lie for the moment. In this sense, puzzles are a kind of mindfulness practice, drawing the brain into a space that’s safe and contained, a space in which only solving this particular puzzle in this particular moment matters.

Puzzles give the brain constraints and rules, and they provide a clear end-point. Solving a puzzle is a kind of practice for solving real-world problems, but without all the real world’s gray areas and difficulties. Real-world problems don’t always have neat and tidy answers, and they don’t always have a clearly-defined or predictable process. Puzzles take all the ambiguity out of the solution-finding process, letting the brain enjoy just what’s in front of it, and no more. In so doing, they strengthen mental processes for when I do actually have to deal with the real world.

Solving a puzzle is a process not unlike the process of solving real-life problems, but it happens in a protected and limited space. Puzzles create a magic circle, one with clear rules and expectations. Puzzles give the brain something to, well, puzzle over, and in so doing the puzzle-solver enters a meditative zone. In the moment of solving a puzzle, nothing else matters—just the puzzle and the brain. At the same time, puzzles strengthen the brain for the real puzzles it will undoubtedly have to solve when stepping out of that magic circle.

Puzzles have been a life-long fascination of mine. I remember as a child looking forward to getting the latest word search books, just as I look forward now to getting the latest issue of Variety Puzzles. There aren’t many things in my life that are so pleasurable or easily manageable, and I find that puzzles serve a role in my life that’s similar to that served by yoga and meditation.

We all have problems to solve. We might as well enjoy the process of finding solutions when we can.