How to win the game of life

If you are reading this article soon after it is published you may well be following the World Cup of football (which is soccer, for my American friends, not the adaptation of rugby that a Yale rugby player turned into what is now called American Football).  Personally I am not the slightest bit interested in football, but I accept I am in a distinct minority in that regard.

I believe the aim in football is to score as many goals as possible (although perhaps in the case of my team, England, it is to try to avoid as many penalty kicks as possible!)  Achieve lots of goals and you win the game.

It is the same in life.  Winning the game of life is all about achieving as many goals as you can.  Or, rather, as many "right" goals as you can.  Just as in football you can have a wrong goal (please refer to the "offside rule"), so you can in life too.  Although unlike the case in football there is a wide gradation of "right" and "wrong" goals.  You cannot win the game of football by scoring lots of "wrong" goals, and nor can you win the game of life this way either.

Achieving lots of the right goals should not be regarded as putting on lots of pressure and creating lots of stress - which is the way probably most people see it.

Perhaps one good way of looking at this is by comparing it with what you might do on holiday.  What, for you, is the purpose of a holiday, and what constitutes a really good holiday?  Think about this carefully for a few minutes and answer both of those questions as honestly as you can.  Do this before reading any further if possible, as it is best if you complete this exercise before seeing what I say next.

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Many people will have answered that the purpose of a holiday is to rest, to recover so you have lots of energy to carry on with your daily life on your return.  Certainly that would be my answer to the first question.

Many of those same people will then anwer that a really good holiday allows them to see lots of new things and take part in lots of exciting activities.  If you go on a package holiday you will find that the resort is usually designed in such a way as to achieve this.  Typically on the morning after your arrival you will meet with someone whose role is to convince you to go on lots of trips, some of which will probably involve waking up really early in the morning, perhaps earlier than you would normally get up in order to go to work!  Even if you don't book many, or any, of these "exciting" tours, you will probably find the resort will organize lots of sporting and other activities and encourage you to join in them rather than laze by the pool or on the beach.

Or perhaps your idea of a good holiday is the same as the American tourists in the 1969 film "If It's Tuesday, This Must Be Belgium".  Get to see as many countries as possible, without spending enough time to "see" any of them at all!

Now for some people perhaps having a frantically active holiday really does give them rest and recovery.  If so, they are making the right decision by signing up for all those activities that appeal.  But for many others, including me, indulging in so many activities means I don't get the rest and recovery I need.  So I try to ensure I budget plenty of time for just lying back on the beach or beside the pool, and reading some nice (and not particularly sophisticated) novels.

My main goals on holiday are to relax and rest.  If I do plenty of relaxing and resting I have achieved those goals.  As I am married, my goals are also to ensure my wife has a really good time.  Her aims are very different from mine.  She really enjoys lots of activity, seeing new things, having new experiences.  So we DO book a number of the activities the resort tries to sell us.  If we get to see lots of new and interesting things, and have lots of new and interesting experiences, she is happy - and I have then achieved the other goals of the holiday.

This can apply to daily life too.  Perhaps you suffer a lot of stress in your life.  Maybe, if so, a goal could be identifying what causes stress and eliminating as much of this as possible.  It could be removing stress-creating clutter from your life.  It could be simply taking more time out to rest and "smell the roses".  These goals are just as valid as, and perhaps more so than, the goals of people you see zipping around achieving lots of concrete, tangible goals.

Or it may be that you feel you need to earn more money so that you can plan for a future which allows you to do what you want and have less stress.  If so, perhaps starting your own business, and then achieving targets you have set yourself for that business will be the right goals.  But never lose sight of the fact that it is not the money or the business itself that is the goal, but what it will allow you to achieve once you have it.  Be aware that sometimes you can find ways of achieving those "end goals" without having to get more money.  And also be aware that none of us knows how many more years, months, weeks, days, hours of life remain for us.  If you spend your remaining years, months, weeks, days and hours just trying to get the money you need in order to achieve your end goals, then you really haven't achieved any of your goals at all!  Keep under review at all times what your goals are, whether they are real goals, and whether there might be better ways of achieving them than the ways you are currently pursuing.

Please do not take this as a diatribe against acquiring more money.  If you have read many of my articles you will know I am very much in favour of taking actions (the right actions, of course) to acquire more money.  But I am also aware that too many of us, myself included, are in danger of confusing "means" and "ends".  Acquiring more money is always only a means to an end.  If you don't achieve that end, then you haven't really achieved anything at all.

Finally, for anyone reading this who views what I am saying as coming from a very selfish position, achieving goals is not simply about achieving pleasure, gaining things and experiences for yourself without any concern for the happiness or well-being of others.  A good, rounded life plan should have both "self-centred" and "other-centred" goals.  What exactly is meant by "other-centred" is very individual.  In fact, I would go so far as to say it is completely unique to you.  It may include making your family and friends happy in various ways.  In fact it should.  It may also go beyond just making friends and family happy, but making others, including complete strangers, happy as well.  Again, in fact it should.  You may achieve those "non-centred" goals by spending more of your time, more of your money, or perhaps both.

So, to win the game of life you need to score the right goals.  And to score those goals you need to find our where the goal posts are.  Get going now by checking you have the right goals and finding the right ways to achieve them!

You Are Special

Are you special?

Of course you are!  There is absolutely no doubt about that at all.  You are very special!

How did it make you feel when I said that?  Despite the fact that this is a very impersonal conversation - one where neither of us knows anything about the other and we are not talking to each other directly - I am guessing it made you feel good, even if only for a brief moment.

You are special, but not because someone else says or thinks you are.  You are special simply because you are YOU.  There is nobody else quite like you.  There has never been anyone quite like you in the past, and there will never be anyone exactly the same as you in the future.

This is all true.  So true that you shouldn't need me, or anyone else, to confirm it for you.

The trouble is, most of us DO seem to need constant validation of this simple fact.

This can be especially the case in relationships.  You thrive on compliments from your spouse or significant other.  You want them to tell you that you are more beautiful, handsome, caring, intelligent, etc than anyone else.  Perhaps in the first flush of love that is what they truly believed.  But maybe now they don't.  Not because they love you any the less.  They still love you deeply, but no longer need to believe you are more beautiful, handsome, caring, intelligent, etc than anyone else.  They love you for who you really are, not for the projection of what you believe you should be.

That true, deep love is very important.  And it illustrates a deeper, wider lesson.  That you don't have to be "more".  It is enough that you simply are.

You don't have to be "more successful" than others.  It doesn't matter how successful others are.  Well, it does for them, of course, and we should always be pleased for the successes of our friends, colleagues and relatives.  But you do not have to be more successful than them, only as successful as you want to be.

Life is an experience, a beautiful experience, not a competition.  There will always be someone better than you in almost any aspect, any characteristic, any skill.  The purpose of life is not for you to be the best, but simply to be all that you can be.

You don't have to look in the mirror, ask it who the most beautiful person in the world is, and then expect it to answer that you are.  We all know the fairy tale where someone did that.  Look at the damage she caused before she was forced to wear a pair of red hot shoes (and by "hot" I am not referring to how popular they were!) and dance in them until she dropped dead.  You don't want to be the evil queen in Snow White!  And you don't need to be either!

It is enough that you are special and that you know you are special.  That you are talented (even if you haven't developed all those talents yet) and that you know you are talented.  But especially that you are loving and kind and that the world is a better place because you are here.

You are special, very special, but don't go looking for anyone else to confirm that to you.  It is enough simply that you ARE.

Serenity

In the 1930s  Reinhold Niebuhr wrote what has become known as the Serenity Prayer:

"God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,  Courage to change the things I can, And wisdom to know the difference."

All three elements of this prayer are important.  Clearly if we see something that should be changed and know how we can change it, then change it we should!  But it is also very important to take proper note of the other two elements.  Recognizing the things we cannot change and accepting them the way they are.

Most of us interpret the world around us far too personally.  We think that everything revolves around us, just as people before Galileo believed the sun revolved around the earth.  So when things are not the way we think they should be, we view this as a personal attack.  Perhaps not consciously, but definitely unconsciously.

This links back to my previous article.  There I discussed how we take the words of others too personally, which then effectively turns those words into magic spells against us.  What others say to us is conditioned by something in them, not in us.

But this also applies to the world around us in general.  Many people see this as a hostile world.  It is not.  It just seems that way to you.  Sometimes bad things happen.  Not because we deserve them.  Not because of something we did or said.  They just happen.  Yes, sometimes they ARE a result of, or at least influenced by, something we did or said.  But often they are not.

It is good to try to identify when something bad (or something good) has resulted from our own actions or words.  If we can see there is a link then we can change our behaviour to make it less likely something bad like this will happen again, or more likely something good like this will happen again.  That is "courage to change the things I can".  But have the "wisdom to know the difference" and recognize that most things are not personally linked in this way.  They just happen.

I happen to believe we all have a lot of power to change the world around us in a very positive way.  If we use that power properly we can achieve great things and have wonderful, happy lives.  But I also know that the things people say to me, the things they do to me, the situations that arise every day which are not the way I want them to be, are mostly nothing to do with me.  They are to do with those other people, and to do with simply the way things are.  They are not personal and I do not take them personally.

If you can really adopt the Serenity Prayer as your own life philosophy I truly believe you can have a much happier and a much more fulfilled life.  Try it!

Reacting to the Word

In my previous article I referred to the power of the Word.  This is an enormous, one could even say magical, power, hence the title "Abracadabra".  So, if someone uses the power of the Word against you, effectively casting a spell on you (whether intentionally or not), what options do you have?  How can you protect yourself from this spell?  What shield do you have to reflect the spell away from you?

Some would say you have three options:  accept, ignore or challenge.  My position is that actually you only have two: accept or challenge.  You cannot simply ignore it, as that is really a subtle way of accepting.

Imagine I come up to you and say "You are stupid!".  How would you react to this?

If you are like most people your first reaction will be anger, or at least annoyance.  Your first thought will probably be something like "How dare you say this!".  Probably you feel that is a reaction of challenge.  You are angry with the statement because you know it is false.  I disagree with this analysis and would go as far as to say this reaction is an acceptance of the basic underlying premise.  You agree, somewhere below your conscious thinking, that you are stupid, or at least that there is some stupidity within you, and you then become angry with the other person for exposing this stupidity.  So you are accepting the negative magic spell they are casting against you.

Your next reaction may then be a "tit for tat", telling them they are ..... - fill in the magic word here.  If you already know them, you may find some aspect of their personality that offends you.  If you do not know them, you may simply respond in kind with something like "You are stupid too!".

I am reminded of the apocryphal quote supposedly from Winston Churchill.  The Labour MP, Bessie Braddock (or the Conservative, Lady Astor, depending on which version you read) apparently said to Winston "Sir!  You are disgustingly drunk!", to which Winston replied "My dear, you are disgustingly ugly!  But tomorrow I shall be sober and you will still be disgustingly ugly!".  A very clever, if somewhat ungallant, riposte.  And one which, if delivered to Lady Astor, was in my view patently untrue.  But note it begins with an acceptance of the original statement.  Winston was not refuting that he was drunk (although a number of versions of this story suggest he wasn't drunk at all, but just tired - which might explain the uncharacteristic lack of gallantry).  His bite back at the accuser acknowledged the truth of what she said and then continued with something even more uncomplimentary about her.  It was also a very negative thing to do.  He was accepting the barb of her negative statement, allowing the spell she cast to find its mark, and then casting an even more negative spell back at her.  The damage he did, if this story is true, quite probably lasted a lifetime.  A truly evil magic spell.

So my position is that the usual "challenge" to unkind words is not a challenge at all.  But what about simply ignoring them?  If you are an accomplished Zen practitioner, if you are close to achieving the state of Nirvana, then you could completely ignore those words as irrelevant.  Personally I am not close to achieving the state of Nirvana, and I know that if I choose to ignore unkind things that are said to me I will be complicit in accepting them.  I will be helping the "evil magician" to cast his or her spell.

In that case, how do you challenge these magic spells that constantly afflict you?

You challenge them by recognizing that the words are not about you at all.  They are entirely about the person who speaks them.  That person doesn't truly know you, even if they are a close friend or family member.  The only person who really knows you is YOU.

Jesus referred to this in a powerful challenge in Matthew chapter 7.  He said:

"Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye?  How can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when all the time there is a plank in your own eye?  You hypocrite!  First take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye."

When others say nasty things to me I feel sad.  Not for myself, but for them.  What they are saying shows that they have a problem.  I don't have that problem - they do.  I challenge what they say firstly by knowing that their unkind words are expressing some weakness, some fault inside them.  And then I affirm the opposite of what they say.  Not out loud.  I am not trying to start or continue an argument.  What that person says is completely irrelevant to me, but I am not going to encourage them to repeat or expand it by being drawn into argument.

If they "You are stupid!" I affirm "I am full of wisdom!".  Note I would never respond with "I am not stupid!".  Focussing on the negative in this way gives it power.  Notice my choice of words - I "affirm".  Just as in your daily affirmations you (hopefully) use to reach your goals through manifestation, you choose to focus on the positive, not the negative.

From now on, choose not to accept the burdens so many people around you try to lay on you with their choice of words.  Recognize that what they say has nothing to do with you and everything to do with them.  If you do this, and if you use their verbal negative attacks as an opportunity to affirm the positives, you will be completely protected from the magical spells that so unnecessarily hurt almost everyone else around you.