LESSONS I LEARNT AT 25,000 FEET — PART 3

Dear Bloomers 🌸,

I will be honest, I am feeling a little nostalgic writing this. This is the third and final part of this series and it has been such a joy to share it with you. But do not worry, you will not stop hearing from me. I still have so much more in the bag and I cannot wait to share it all.

If you are just joining us, welcome! I would strongly encourage you to start from Part 1 so you can fully appreciate the journey. Both links are embedded in this piece.

[embed]LESSONS I LEARNT AT 25,000 FEET Ever heard the saying “Every Man is a Teacher and Every Experience is a Lesson” and thought; “surely life isn’t that…medium.com

[embed]LESSONS I LEARNT AT 25,000 FEET — PART 2 Dear Bloomers 🌸medium.com

For those who have been here from the beginning, thank you! Genuinely. Now let us finish what we started!

When we left off in Part 2, I had found my strategy, hit a plateau, gone back to the drawing board, and learned the hard way why documentation matters. I was making progress, but I was stuck again. A handful of words were simply refusing to show themselves, and I was running out of both ideas and time.

Then something unexpected happened, we will be discussing it in Lesson 5;

5. It Is Okay To Ask For Help

The young man seated beside me had been quietly following along, unbeknown to me, and spotted a word I had completely missed. In that moment I felt equal parts relieved and grateful. I had seriously been considering closing the magazine and calling it a day. But one fresh pair of eyes changed everything.

Sometimes all we need is someone to point us in the right direction. Not to do the work for us, just to give us the nudge, the clue, the small encouragement that reignites our momentum.

We live in a world that glorifies self-sufficiency almost to a fault. We wear busyness like a badge and independence like armour. But the truth is that none of us got to where we are entirely alone. Someone opened a door, made a call, shared a resource, or simply said “have you tried this?” at exactly the right moment. As written in Proverbs 11:14: “Where there is no counsel, the people fall; but in the multitude of counsellors there is safety.” Do not let pride be the reason you stay stuck. Ask. Receive. Move forward.

There is also the part nobody talks about, receiving help graciously is itself a skill. Some of us are so uncomfortable being helped that we deflect, minimise or refuse it altogether. Do not do that.

When help comes, receive it with both hands and gratitude.

Encouraged by his help, I did something instinctive, I held the magazine toward him so he could get a better look at the grid. And in doing that, I ended up viewing it from a completely different angle myself. Just like that, I spotted two words I had been missing the entire time.

6. Change Your Perspective

“The significant problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them.” — Albert Einstein

Sometimes the problem has not changed. You just need to look at it differently.

I don’t know if this happens to anyone else, but there are times when I am so deep inside a problem that I genuinely cannot see it clearly anymore. In those moments, what helps me most is stepping completely outside of it, pretending it is not my problem at all and looking at it the way a calm, detached observer would. Half the time I find the answer myself in the middle of explaining the situation to someone else. The words leave my mouth and the solution arrives before I even finish the sentence.

It is not that we do not have the answers. It is that we are sometimes too close, too emotionally invested, too exhausted to access them clearly. A shift in position; physical, mental or emotional, can be all it takes.

Take yourself for a walk. Call a trusted friend. Sleep on it. Write it out. Change your seat. Pray. Sometimes the view from a slightly different angle reveals everything you needed to see all along. And even more often, the perspective shift we need most is an upward one, Proverbs 3:5–6 reminds you to: “Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways submit to Him, and He will make your paths straight.”

At this point I had fewer than four words left and was rapidly running out of time before landing. I held the magazine toward my seat partner a little longer, hoping for more help. But after a few minutes it was clear he had moved on and was no longer interested.

And so I made a decision.

7. Know When to Let Go

I truly believe that one of the most heartbreaking things a person can experience is being held back from what they are fully capable of achieving. And I use the word allow very deliberately, because in most cases, whether we realise it or not, we have a say in whether we stay stuck or move forward.

It is Bishop David Oyedepo that says: “Whatever you don’t want, you don’t watch.” And Jim Rohn adds; ”Your life does not get better by chance, it gets better by change.”

We spend so much of our lives waiting; waiting for the person who keeps letting us down to finally come through, waiting for the perfect opportunity, waiting for conditions that may never arrive. And quietly, without us even noticing, all that waiting becomes the very thing holding us back.

There is a difference between patience and paralysis. Patience is strategic and purposeful; you are waiting because the timing is not right yet. Paralysis is waiting out of fear, out of loyalty to something that has long stopped serving you, or simply out of habit. Learn to tell the difference.

When something or someone is no longer contributing to your growth (not ruthlessly, not carelessly, but decisively), know when to say I am done here. And then move forward without guilt.

I put the magazine down. Refocused. And found the remaining words myself. All of them. With time to spare before landing.

Sitting there at 25,000 feet, word search completed, I thought about everything that had just happened. I had gone from nearly giving up to finishing the whole thing not because I was particularly enthusiastic about word searches, but because I set a goal, kept adjusting my approach, received help when I needed it, and refused to stop before I crossed the finish line.

Which brings me to the final lesson. And perhaps the one that ties all eight together.

8. Always Set SMART Goals

I know, I know, you have heard “SMART goals” one too many times. Bear with me, I promise this lands differently.

Think back to a time when you had weeks to complete an assignment. Chances are, if you are anything like the professional procrastinators (whom I no longer identify with), you pushed it to the very last minute, and then somehow still got it done.

What does that tell you about work and time?

Don’t rack your brain Parkinson’s Law has the answer. *“Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.”- *Cyril Northcote Parkinson, 1955. The idea is that if you give yourself three months to do something, it will take three months. If you give yourself three weeks, it will take three weeks.

The boundary you set creates focus and urgency, which in turn creates momentum. Without a clear target and a real deadline, tasks drift indefinitely, not because we are lazy, but because the human mind needs a finish line to run toward.

As Napoleon Hill put it: “A goal is a dream with a deadline.” Without the deadline, it remains exactly that; a dream.

Parkinson’s Law

I finished that word search because landing was my deadline. The plane was going down whether I was done or not, and I had decided I would be done first. That decision; that simple, clear, time-bound goal, is what got me across the finish line.

Set the goal. Make it specific. Make it measurable. Give it a deadline, even for the smallest things. Especially for the smallest things. You will be amazed how much faster you move when you have decided exactly where you are going and precisely when you intend to arrive.

And that, right there, is how a one-hour flight and a simple word search reinforced eight lessons I will carry for a lifetime.

Here is the puzzle that started it all.

From Lesson 1 to Lesson 8 (from giving in to positive peer pressure to setting goals with real deadlines), every single lesson came from sixty minutes in the air and a magazine I almost did not pick up.

Pay attention to your ordinary moments. They are rarely as ordinary as they seem.

And just like that, we have reached the end of this series. Thank you for walking this journey with me from Part 1 all the way here. It has meant more than you know.

What was your biggest takeaway from this series? Tell me in the comments, I am all ears.

Love evermore,

The Prolific Bloomer 🌸💖