The Happyist

I should start my stating that this principle is not based on anything I’ve seen, heard or read (and therefore there is absolutely no scientific evidence to support it) it is rather something I came to think about completely out of the blue but it has, in many ways, saved me.

In order to solve a Rubik’s Cube, at the point that you feel a sense of success and progress, you have to do something that is perceived to be undoing everything you’ve achieved so far. With one side matched, to match any more sides, the moves you make appear to be mixing up the colours from the solved side. It quite literally requires you to ‘go backwards’ in order to move forwards in the task.

Let’s consider Bananagrams (superior to Scrabble in all ways). Whilst I’d like to claim my distinguished winning streak is owed to the expensive degree I hold in Linguistics, I know that the reason I succeed in Bananagrams is because I am willing to take a sledgehammer to everything I’ve done so far and start again. I can have 2 letters left and will still, if it comes to it, mix them all up and start again. A controversial tactic in a word game that is also a race I’ll admit. But, in life, I stand by it.

When it comes to life, we avoid the feeling that we are moving backwards at all costs. Once something is ‘achieved’, whether that be in our careers, our relationships or smaller day-to-day endeavours, the idea of undoing it makes us feel like the completed work is wasted and now amounts to nothing. But this would be to assume that life is linear and that when it is not, it equates to failure. Instead, this Rubik’s Cube Principle encourages you to know that those moves are just the next ones you’re making and despite looking dysfunctional, they are the moves of a winner.