Life is a game and you are the prize.
Life is a game and it is not the Game of Life, it is Snakes and Ladders. Did you ever play this game? You roll dice and move the playing piece that number of squares. When you reach a square with a ladder you manage to jump ahead several squares much further along the game. If you happen by chance to land on a snake square you fall down, sometimes way down. This is life. Except the goal is not to reach the end of the board as it is in this “fun family game” because there is no end of board. The game we are all playing reaches for miles with millions of squares and millions of ladders and millions of snakes. The only option is always keep moving forward, if you stop moving forward even just 1 square at a time that is when you lose. To stop moving forward is the real failure and it’s worse than death. It’s okay to take a time out, to reset and recuperate but we need to ensure we are always moving forward.
“If you can’t fly then run, if you can’t run then walk, if you can’t walk then crawl, but whatever you do you have to keep moving forward.”
― Martin Luther King Jr.
I have made so wrong steps on many wrong roads and seem to have hit many many snakes and few ladders but I am still here. I get to be here today to drink coffee and to write. I have my health and everyday to look to new opportunities and a new future and change my destiny. But it is all up to me. The game is not to reach an end point of “success” but if we were playing a board game of life the purpose is for the little playing piece we are to keep learning and growing. We can move along like a caterpillar and every ladder or snake to be an opportunity to grow to become the butterfly. If butterflies then became birds and then something else and something else that is what we must do, constant birth, death and rebirth. Keep using these times to grow and learn. I keep seeing success as a high flying career, huge pay check, net worth being self worth and the amazing wife and family. This is such a narrow view of life and success. I have none of these things and yet I have had so many things I have previously labelled as failures, many failed relationships and jobs and career missteps and stuck in dead end job after dead end job. It is with each day and step forward and a whole lot of introspection, therapy, coaching and reading that I see how far I have come. All these ‘failures’ are opportunities to take stock reassess, learn and try again.
A failure is not always a mistake, it may simply be the best one can do under the circumstances. The real mistake is to stop trying.
— B. F. Skinner
I have kept myself stuck in a victim mindset, drank too much, wasted time and opportunities and been my own worst enemy. I have caused myself pain and others pain but I have also experienced a lot of joy, shared joy and brought others joy. I have been through the worst of heartbreaks and each time the lessons of life slap me across the face and it feels like I am starting at square one. Except I am not. Even if it was literally square one as in the snakes and ladders game, my soul is not at square 1. I have all the lessons of life from my past up to this point and it is up to me to be awake enough to learn the lesson.
I can see the breadcrumbs left by others and follow the path to start seeing new ladders previously hidden because I refuse to see them when they are right in front of me. I can bring joy to myself and relish and love each step because there is no getting to the finish line. We all want to keep climbing and growing and to have have outward success, to live a life that is thriving and not just surviving but do not measure your worth by your lack of big house and perfect family or bank account. Do you have an opportunity every day to keep growing to keep learning to keep trying to move further along and upward?
It is a mistake to look too far ahead. Only one link of the chain of destiny can be handled at a time.
― Winston Churchill
Sometimes we are knocked down again and again and each time we are to shed layers of our old scripts our old stories and victim mentality, our hurts and traumas and grow. It is in our attitude to the journey and not the end result that makes life worth living. I am learning this only now at 38. Many many mistakes and errors in judgement and constantly being knocked back and getting a reality slap I am finally learning the lessons. I am so grateful to the teachers and guides in the form of relationships, family and mentors through books, podcasts and other media have lead the way forward and allowed me to grow and keep growing. The saying hurt people hurt people is true and none of us really get through childhood unscathed or fragmentation. It is our responsibility to heal these wounds and remove our traumas. This is the truest form of success. Freedom and becoming our true selves. Freedom of the conditioning and hurts. Remember you are not your mistakes. You are not your failed marriage, loss of job, lack of money. You are not your drink habit, you are not your anger, you are not your missed opportunities.
“The only man who never makes a mistake is the man who never does anything.”
― Theodore Roosevelt
To finally become the butterfly we have to completely remove the identity of the caterpillar. The only real life is the one we choose, to finally accept ourselves and to keep going keep, moving forward with a passion and a commitment to this true self.
