Life is a Game
How to Win by Lightening Up
Have you ever noticed how successful people are usually smiling?
For example, billionaires, like Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Warren Buffet, Bill Gates, Oprah Winfrey, Mark Cuban, Michael Jordan, Richard Branson and Steven Spielberg are usually smiling. If you check their pictures before they were successful, you can see they smile a lot, no matter what they are doing. If you watch their videos, you can observe how they treat their work and lives as games.
The winners in all fields treat their lives as games. Sports stars, great actors, best-selling authors, brilliant scientists, amazing doctors, amazing artists, charismatic leaders, Nobel Prize winners and brilliant innovators all seem to be playing a game and having fun, right? They are winning their games.
Is life a fun game for you?
Or a drudgery?
Is it pleasant or stressful?
Are you winning your game of life? Do you even know it’s a game?
Contents
Myths about Being Serious
Ten Problems with Being Too Serious about Your Games
Ten Problems with Taking Yourself Too Seriously
Ten Benefits of Lightening Up
Imagination Exercise
Ten Methods to Lighten Up
Myths about Being Serious
Certain myths about work and life can pull you down.
“Work is not supposed to be fun.”
“Treating patients is a serious business.”
“It’s time for you to grow up and get serious.”
“Life sucks and then you die.”
Perhaps the oldest myth of all: “People think I’m important if I am really serious.”
Fixing problems by getting even MORE serious is like fixing a computer with a hammer. The more serious you get, the worse the problem becomes until you completely fail.
As a result of being too serious, you attract problems to yourself.
Ten Problems with Being Too Serious About Your Games
1. You suffer from extra stress, worry, anxiety, emotional pain and drudgery.
2. People tend to misunderstand you and then oppose you. You even get enemies.
3. You fail more often than you win.
4. You are rarely excited about anything.
5. You do things the hard way. Winning at work, and the game of life itself, is more difficult than it needs to be.
6. Your financial condition is rarely as good you wish it was.
7. Your relationships are frequently in turmoil.
8. You use bad habits to get peace and relief in life.
9. You have bad luck.
10. Worst of all, you take yourself too seriously.
Ten Problems with Taking Yourself Too Seriously
1. You are easily offended. You have a thin skin.
2. Instead of learning from your losses and failures, you hide them or justify them.
3. Being “right” and proving others are wrong is more important than being correct.
4. Accepting help is difficult, especially if it makes you look weak.
5. You have a self-importance button. Being respected and admired is more important to you than almost everything else.
6. You hold onto bad ideas despite proof they are bad ideas.
7. You do not understand why people do not realize how important you are.
8. Letting go of personal conflicts is difficult; you hold onto grudges.
9. You constantly feel a little angry, revengeful, sad or upset.
10. You do not have much fun.
Fortunately, once you lighten up and stop taking yourself, and your life games so seriously, you earn some incredible benefits.
Ten Benefits of Lightening up
1. As soon as you lighten up a little, you start to feel like you are playing Monopoly or tennis or a video game.
2. You have a thicker skin. You are not easily offended. You do not worry what people think of you.
3. If you lose a single battle in the war, you jump back in with enthusiasm. Losing is just part of the game and not nearly as dramatic. Success is not a life-or-death issue.
4. As you stop being so serious, everyone around you eventually lightens up, too. They feel like teammates instead of fans or competitors.
5. Your view widens and expands. You see the big picture. Your strategies improve.
6. People like to follow you because you share your enthusiasm and success with your team. You help them to be valuable and important winners.
7. You become a game player instead of a game piece. For example, you come up with brilliant strategies for your team to win. You even sacrifice your personal success for the good of the team.
8. You feel playful and motivated, for a change.
9. The journey to your goals is more enjoyable. Each step to your destination is just as rewarding as achieving the goal.
10. You become an A-Performer Superhero!
Fortunately, you can learn and master the skill of lightening up to earn these ten benefits.
Imagination Exercise
Your imagination is a powerful tool you can use to see your better future.
So before jumping into the Action Steps for lightening up your life, take a minute to imagine an improved, less serious approach.
What would your job or career or life be like if you lightened up?
How would it be to feel more playful?
What would it be like to win most of your current games?
What if you had thicker skin?
How would it be if you no longer cared what people thought of you? Or how they treated you?
Close your eyes and create future images and scenarios of operating without being so serious about your work, your life and yourself. Imagine being a game player who usually wins!
By imagining this improvement in your life, you get a glimpse of the fun you will feel. You see how such a change is not only possible, it is likely. You may feel motivated by the images of a better future for yourself.
Ten Methods to Lighten Up
To permanently lighten up your approach to your work and life, you need to take action. You need to make changes and form new habits. You need to change how you play your games, once and for all.
The following 10 links below describe simple, but powerful methods you can use to lighten up. At the bottom of each method is a form to add your Action Steps. Create these important Action Steps whenever you think of something you can do to lighten up.
As soon as you add at least one Action Step, it will appear on your Dashboard. Just click “My Dashboard” in the menu at the top of each page.