[New Year, New You] Day 21: If Life is a Game, Here Are the Rules
Life is a game. Unfortunately, it’s a game that has become so steeped in confusion and seriousness that few people even realize they’re playing a game anymore. It’s as if we all started playing a game of Monopoly, but then instead of being the player, we start to believe we are the pawn.
Life has become so serious, it’s like we’re stuck on the “jail” square of the Monopoly board of life. To get to where we go want to go, to take the next step, we just have to roll the dice, give it a try and play the cards we’re dealt. But we behave as though we’ve forgotten it was a game and stand on the jail square so that when someone says, “Hey! It’s your turn! Roll the dice.”
“Sorry. I can’t. I’m in jail.”
“Yeah, I know. But it’s your turn now. We’ve gone around three times, and now it’s your turn to roll.”
“No, you don’t understand. I’m in jail.”
Life’s obstacles have become overwhelming because of the degree of confusion and misinformation that has prevented us from understanding the rules of the game, or identifying a clearly defined playing field on which to play. So in the interests of creating a great new adventure and overcoming life’s obstacles with more confidence, I’d like to introduce you to a few elements of the game of life, so we can get busy playing!
The Player
Think of yourself as a droplet of water. You are a part of the unimaginably large ocean of life. You are a reflection of the things that are around you and your constitution is very much influenced by the environmental factors to which you have been exposed.
While you are “just a droplet” when you combine your strength and substance with other droplets, when you team up with them, you are what carves rivers into mountains! Your strength is undeniable when you act out of the true strength and character. You strategize, solve problems, observe and evaluation situations and experiences based on what you understand. You’re capable of helping others and improving situations in life. You are a player!
The Pawn
You have a body, maybe you chose it, maybe you didn’t, but it doesn’t change the fact that it’s yours to be responsible for. It needs to move, be fed and watered and attended to. If you don’t pay attention to it, throw it off the board, or just negate it completely, the game still will go on without you. So it certainly makes for a better game when you give it a decent amount of attention–enough that it stays in the game!
The Playing Field
To simplify it, we could say the playing field is your neighbourhood, or city, or your sphere of influence–maybe even the planet!! But let’s go back to our droplet metaphor. S a droplet, you are a force that creates an effect on the water (Life) around you. Every action you take has an undeniable influence on the bigger part of life. Consider the playing field of your life much like the ripple in the water after a droplet of water falls.
Your actions do create an effect. The more you act, the more you affect change. Those closest to you will experience the largest effect, but it’s not hard to imagine how this is true–just look at how we found one another. It stemmed from a sequence of actions that caused a ripple of events and now here we are–working together to improve life in spite of the distance and differences between us.
(Here are two little videos that are some of my favorite inspiring examples of how one action creates a ripple effect through all of life; Life Vest Kindness Boomerang, (even if you’ve seen it ten times, watch it again!) and the other is Validation (It’s about 15 minutes so you might need to make time for it, but it’s beautiful, too!)
While it’s easy to understand that our choices impact the bigger part of life, when we feel distressed, depressed and withdrawn from life, it’s not easy to apply that idea to the way we live.
The Opponents
As I shared in the podcast that accompanies this blog post, if our goal is more order, clarity, productivity, harmony and happiness for ourselves and others–a better world, then the “opponent” in this game is not your spouse, not your children and not your parents for the “wrongs” they may have inflicted upon you. The real opponent is confusion, never people.
Where there has been confusion, life likely went out of control. Where we lacked tools or skills to solve the problems that appeared before us, we withdrew and maybe began to engage in self-doubt and other self-destructive or other destructive behaviours. The same is true for our parents and their parents before them. One of the problems with confusion, is that it is very contagious. When we lack the tools and understanding about why problems happen and fail to handle them, then we very easily inflict the same damage upon the next generation.
There are many factors in life that can bring confusion about:
- Extreme loss and death
- Pain, illness and physical suffering
- Emotional pain and suffering–attacks against one’s character or ability.
- Drugs, alcohol, other pharmaceuticals as well as poor nutrition which all prevent the body and mind from operating as they should.
- Significant lifestyle changes-divorce, moving, etc.
- Educational confusions related to understanding language and symbols.
- Non-communication or one-way communications — your not having been allowed to or able to communicate, or someone imposing communication on you in a way that you could not easily respond.
Any and all of these factors can significantly hamper our ability to keep life engaged in a continuous and consistent expansion of life.
Depending on the obstacles you have to overcome in order to bring more happiness, productivity and confidence to your life and the lives affected by the droplet you are, you’ve got your work cut out for you. “Buck up, Buttercup,” is one of my favourite things to tell myself when things get tough. Feel free to use it on yourself if you need it.
The Jersey
For the purposes of our game metaphor, let’s consider your uniform as the sum total of your life experiences, which determine how you view and respond to life. There are so many aspects of life we need to attend to and be responsible for in order for it all to go right. In many ways we can compare it to having a walk-in closet–it’s where you’ve got to keep the many things you’ve collected over the years that you put on and wear throughout the day to show people who you are, what you stand for, what you’re wanting to do and where you’re trying to go.
No matter how much clutter may be in your closet, there’s nothing to be gained by sitting there and staring at it with regret, frustration or disappointment. These feelings naturally come up as we look at some of the poor choices we’ve made in the past, or the reality of the situation we’re in. There’s a lot to be learned from our actions of the past, especially when we can examine them factually instead of emotionally. If you ignore your negative emotions, stuff them, deny them or sit stewing on them, you will significantly interfere with your ability to make progress.
How well can you organize your closet if you sit sulking on the floor looking at all the crazy things you’ve put in it?
How much order will you achieve if you get lost in thoughts about what you could have put in the closet, but didn’t?
What about if you dribble tears of self-pity about the things that other people got in their closet that you didn’t get?
And if you sit on the floor chewing your fingernails in anxiety about what someone else might put in your closet when you’re not paying attention?
It’s your CLOSET!! You can fill it with whatever you want! The more you keep your attention on the mistakes, confusions or perceived “failures” of the past, the less likely you will be to make that closet something you can feel good about.
Whether it’s great new outfits or improved relationships, your success in life will be determined by your ability to keep your eyes on the “prize”–to keep your attention on your future goals and objectives about how you want your life to look and feel. There are enough pressures on us already, do what you can to avoid adding more by steeping yourself in shame, regret, blame or invalidation for the things that you can no longer change and instead get busy addressing the ones you can!
You Need Clear & Specific Goals
The one thing that will keep you playing in spite of your failures is to establish clear goals you’re willing to work toward. We know the opponent is a mighty one–the weight of confusion we have to bear is enormous. That’s why we do need a team. The next task you have to undertake will be to determine the quality of life you wish to have–the goal of the game that is worth fighting for and that keeps you willing to fail, fumble and make a fantastic fool of yourself, but gets you back up again quickly, willing to learn from your mistakes, and do whatever it takes to stay in the game.
Take the time to make a dream board, and set up regularly scheduled time to review it. A person without dreams is already dead to a very large degree–even though their heart may still be beating in their chest. When the weight upon us is heavy and dreaming big dreams feels difficult, even small goals and little steps are enough to keep hope alive and your eyes on the prize of a better life in the future.
But the juicier your goals get, the more they align with you who are and what you wish to contribute and accomplish in life, the more willing you will be to overcome any obstacle in your path!
Your Teammates
We’re not supposed to get through this adventure alone.
The pressures upon us are far too great for one of us to overcome alone. Modern marketing depends on our feeling isolated and insecure–this is what sends us running to fill the empty spaces in ourselves with more food, more shoes or bottomless buckets of “rocky road” ice cream and other over-stimulating distractions.
If we operated more out of a sense of our togetherness with confidence in one another and in what’s possible, we’d have a lot less empty spaces to fill and a lot more pleasure just living and loving life!
The spiritual math of the situation we’re in is that the weight on one person’s shoulders requires the strength of at least two people to overcome. Any idea is only valuable to the degree that it works. Knowing that it takes two people to overcome the burden one person carries on their back, it is my hope that you will be far more willing to reach out when you need help and that you’ll understand how vital your well-being and presence is to the lives which are connected to yours.
Consider how much time you’ve spent “in your head” wondering what’s “wrong” with you or “why you just can’t figure things out.” What if the reason you couldn’t figure things out was because you were spending time in your head wondering what was wrong with you, instead of reaching out and asking for help? Wouldn’t that be a trap to stick ourselves in!?!
“I believe great people to be those who know how they got where they are, and what they need to do to get where they’re going. Great people have a vision of their lives that they practice emulating each and every day. They go to work on their lives, not just in their lives. Their lives are spent living out the vision they have of their future, in the present. They compare what they’ve done with what they intended to do. And where there’s a disparity between the two, they don’t wait very long to make up the difference.”
― Michael E. Gerber, The E-Myth Revisited
Roll the Dice Every Day
Life invites us to roll the dice, every day. Every day there is a new sun that rises and a fresh start to begin again. Every hour the hands of the clock make another spin of the dial. In an ideal situation, you continue to improve your ability, responsibility and influence over life. The more you know, the better life gets.
Each moment, when we choose to allow it, is another opportunity for us to press the reset button and start again with more hope and a sense of adventure, keeping our eyes on our goals and renewing our commitment, raising our standards and allowing another layer of the social veneer that has kept us stuck fall to the ground as dust!
In order to make this journey go right, you’re going to need to keep your spirit of play and remember that life is a LOT like Monopoly. Don’t get stuck on the “jail” square. Roll the dice. See what happens! Play your cards, make the best decisions you can with what you’ve got, and stay in the game.
Thank you so much for joining me in this 21-Day Challenge. If you want to catch the podcast to accompany this post, you can find it here. Please do sign up for my newsletter and come follow me on Facebook if you’d like to be invited and included on any of our future challenges!
Love and hero capes because you deserve ’em,
Tera