The Hanayama lock secret to maintaining your mental sanity

For Christmas my brother in law gave me a Hanayama puzzle. Specifically, he gave me a puzzle called "the padlock".

Now if you don't know, Hanayama is a Japanese toy company that is most famous for making little cast (zinc supposedly) brain teasers and puzzles.

And the puzzle he gave me is hard. Like really hard (side note: he gave me a level 5 difficulty to 'start me off in the middle'... IE he thought it was out of 10 levels when really level 5 is the second highest and rated as 'expert').

So hard that you can spend an hour tinkering with the thing before finding the next step.

Actually, according to Hanayama, the thematic word that goes with the padlock puzzle is "obstinacy".

But the truth is that being obstinate will only get you so far. Because pure obstinacy and unerring tinkering leads to frustration and burn out.

So another thematic word I'd add is "patience".

Have the obstinacy to push through when you need it. And be patient enough to put the darn thing down and solve it another day.

And therein is the secret to mental sanity (in as far as I've found it).

To be patient. To give yourself a break. To have the understanding you won't solve all your challenges in this sitting.

Because this puzzle lock ain't a whole lot different from solving business challenges.

In both cases it's not obvious what the next step is. So you tinker and play and put things into place until...

POP

The next step emerges and a new configuration appears.

And if your next step involves ramping up your marketing, specifically writing a sales page or emails, then you can hop on my waitlist and find out what it takes to get me on your team.

Sign up here:

www.copybymccune.com/waitlist

Tyler McCune

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