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I’ve learned that we live life by our expectations. I had heard that from various Christian and psychology self-improvement books, but it took playing Sudoku for it to really sink in.

When I first started doing the Sudoku puzzles in the Advertiser, I followed the general theory and did them in pencil with a big eraser. I developed my own workable system of writing possible numbers in the blocks. Soon, I could conquer any puzzle, and I began to wonder if I could do the Monday puzzle in pen. I could, so soon I started doing the Tuesday puzzle in pen. It was a little harder to do it without writing the potential choices in the block, but I did it. Within a few weeks of doing the Monday puzzle in pen, I was doing all but Sunday’s puzzle in pen.

I have some pocket books that have three levels of puzzles, easy, medium and hard. Soon I was doing the hard ones in pen, and doing the highest level of the electronic game that my daughter gave me for Christmas, without putting multiple choices in a block. After a few weeks of doing that, I decided to try the Sunday Advertiser puzzle in pen too. I’ve never gone back to pencil.

Now, I don’t say this to brag about my prowess, because I know there are others out there who do it too (and probably faster), but because of the life lesson I observed through doing Sudoku. What I learned was that I was able to do the puzzles in the manner I expected to do them.

At first, I expected to do them in pencil, but I changed my expectations. It took some concentrated effort, but soon I lived up to my expectations; I did the puzzles in pen. And I began to think about other areas of my life that I wasn’t working on with the pen.

I wanted my marriage to be better, but I wanted to do it in pencil (let my husband put out all the effort). I wanted to be calmer, but my expectation of other people was a handy pencil that was keeping me from using the pen.

If I want to do almost all the puzzles of my life in pen, I have to expect that I can. I can take the initiative and talk to my husband when something is wrong instead of waiting for him to notice. I can accept that other drivers are going to get in my way and be rude, and I can choose to change my responses when they are.

But I also have to know when I’m trying to grab the pencil out of someone else’s hand and do their puzzle for them. It isn’t my puzzle to get good grades in high school, that’s my son’s puzzle. It isn’t my puzzle to be a parent to my grandson, that’s my other son’s puzzle.