One of my favorite activities to give my clients is to have them explore the object and rules of how they are currently playing the Life Game. Many times this comes up because the client is feeling stuck or I can hear them saying they want one thing, but acting or speaking in a contradictory way. This is often an excellent clue that there is an old ‘rule’ that would like some attention.

So many times, we have a slew of old rules that we learned somewhere – usually long ago. We haven’t necessarily gone back to re-read the ‘rules’ to see if they’re still true for us so we’re going along with REALLY old rules that actually aren’t consistent with who we are anymore. For example, you might have heard as a child that ‘life is hard’ or ‘no pain, no gain’. There are many people who live by that rule. They go along proving that to themselves with each achievement they strive for. However, along the way, you might have observed that sometimes things fall into place. You might have learned that when you allow things to happen instead of trying to control every detail, there is more ease and sometimes things turn out better than you could have every arranged or even dreamed.

A great exercise is to write your ‘rules’ out. Make a Rule book about life or some area of your life where you feel a gap between where you are and where you’d like to be. Be a detective and start uncovering some of these ‘rules’ or beliefs that are governing your actions, behaviors and thoughts in this area. What do you tell yourself? What is the ‘rule’ that this is based on? Then, ask yourself if that’s true. Just like the example above, we could ask “Is it true that life is hard?” You might say yes and you might say, “Actually, it’s hard when I make it hard.”

This is a perfect time to acknowledge and write your new rule in the Rule book. Every time you feel or think, “it’s going to be a lot of hard work,” you get to remember your new rule. “When things are aligned, they are easy” or “Things are easy when I allow them to be” or whatever words are true for you.

The Game Rules tool invites you to start observing the game you play every day. It asks you to get clear about what ‘rules’ you’ve made for yourself and on a bigger scale, to look at the object of the game you’re playing. IS the object to have fun, to enjoy, to connect or is it to accomplish, to ‘succeed’, to get ahead. There is no right answer – well, there is, there is YOUR Right answer. Whatever is your ‘object’, know what THAT means for you too. If it’s about Success – what is Success for you? What game are you playing and do your rules allow you to win? What rules do you need to re-write to make your game a winnable one?

Have some fun experimenting with this during the week and feel free to leave comments or questions in the Reply box below.