A gift more valuable than anything money can buy.

This year, give your loved ones a Christmas gift they will cherish for life. A gift that will never be forgotten and one they will always thank you for. Talk to them about keeping the big picture in mind. Tell them that it is possible to train our primitive brains, wired for instant gratification, to look at the large picture and add more depth to our lives. If they are old enough, they might associate the term ‘big picture’ or ‘big-picture thinking’ with large organizations and huge budgets. Tell them that big-picture thinking starts with them and should be used to live their lives with more depth. Only then can they apply this concept for the benefit of others.

Most of us have been conditioned to think of life in parts; that every phase should be lived in a certain way by doing certain things. We excel at keeping up appearances and living our lives based on others’ expectations. We reach the finish line still searching for ourselves, still feeling incomplete.

Big-picture thinking helps put your life in context. Not just your immediate life or slices of your life but your life as one whole. The whole You. It forces you to question and understand more about yourself. Thinking this way helps you face your fears rather than running away from them. It helps you keep learning and saying (truthfully), ‘I don’t know’ rather than falling prey to your ego and declaring, ‘I know everything.’

You do not know when you will reach the finish line, but you know you are somewhere in between. Turning back is not an option. Who do you want to become while you are still in the game? From this moment on? What does ‘success’ look like to you? Have you already achieved it? If so, did you find what you were looking for?

Big-picture thinking is for those who are searching for something more than just material success. Every video game, right from those which run on DOS to the latest streaming platforms, gives the player a few moves to safeguard or reward themselves on every level as they move forward, wondering what lurks around the next corner. Big-picture thinking helps you create a template of ‘moves’ specific to your life. How you make your moves depends on how you choose to play the game.  Unlike in games, you can always improvise and customize your moves to handle a specific challenge and make them work better for you.

Symphony is the ability to see the big picture, connect the dots, combine disparate things into something new. Visual artists in particular are good at seeing how the pieces come together. I experienced this myself by trying to learn to draw. – Daniel Pink

Once you stop dividing your life into small slices, you will also stop saying, ‘When I (fill in the blanks here), I will (fill in the blanks.’) Life does not work that way. It is impossible to live your life with depth if you try to compartmentalize it. Every part flows into the other and makes you who you are. When you force your life into rigid parts, you feel incomplete. The only way to make yourself add up is to make choices that will allow you to live consciously, an amalgamation of all the parts that make you whole.

Anyone who draws in any capacity knows that they need to first think of an idea and how to develop it. Many times, what one sets out to draw can transform into a vastly different story or design. And it can be far more beautiful than the artist ever imagined it would be.

Life works that way too.  The final design may be different, but it always works in your favor if you make your moves rather than doing nothing at all. Besides, it will save you from the awful ennui that results from not taking charge of your life and your choices.

Big-picture thinking alerts you to that chink of light you might have otherwise missed in the darkness. These can arrive in any form, at any time, in any way. If you have already been searching, you know to grab the rope and climb as high as it takes to reach that light. Or simply run towards it without looking back. You do not hang around waiting for the light to shine in the way you want it to and when you want it to. You seize the moment without an atom of doubt because nothing in life comes packaged exactly the way you want it to. The best things in life can come in awfully bad packages, at the ‘wrong time’, in the wrong way.

Perhaps the priceless lesson that big-picture thinking strives to teach us is to consciously look beyond that package and make our move to grab the precious gift inside because it will not be offered again.

You’re going to make mistakes. The key is to learn from them as fast as possible and make changes as soon as you can. That’s not always easy to do because ego and pride get in the way, but you have to put all that aside and look at the big picture. – Tiger Woods