How to Design and Play Your Own Life Game

My coaching clients often report feeling overwhelmed by the many commitments they have made in their life — primary relationship, kids, day-to-day demands of their job, managing their long term career, self-care, travel. They are beginning to feel like life is living them and they know that it isn’t sustainable.

That’s when they call their coach.

To help them get a handle on why this is happening and what to do about it, I introduce them to a concept called The Life Game. The idea is this: We are all playing the Life Game. Of course, we each design our own unique version made up of the various categories of life that we choose to give our time and attention. The objective is pretty simple: We are winning the Life Game when we are experiencing ourselves as:

· fulfilled in each category

· balanced across all categories and

· prepared for unexpected events life might throw our way

Client love playing the Life Game. They enjoy having a chance to stand back and make the murkiness of everyday life into discrete categories. They find it natural and easy to gauge their sense of fulfillment in each category. They can quickly see the ways they are, and will always be limited — by time, energy, geography — and they easily accept those limitations. They immediately “get” how and why their life is out of balance as well as the way they have been justifying keeping it out of balance. And, in seeing all of this, they automatically accept that unexpected events could throw things off; but they’re okay with it because they know how to return themselves to balance once the unexpected event is over.

After understanding their life game and focusing their time and attention on fulfillment and balance, they stop dreading their days and start looking forward to the mystery of the day ahead of them.

If you want to give the Life Game a try, here are your instructions:

· Decide what your “life game” is right now. Which areas of life would need to be getting your attention in order for you to feel fulfilled and balanced?

· For each area you choose to include, describe what fulfillment in that area would look like. Don’t describe a strategy or specific outcomes that are outside of your direct control. Don’t just think about what you think you can tolerate in this area. Describe your real vision for what it would take for you to be really happy in that area of life.

· Once you have done that for all categories, consider the limitations that are common to us all — you only be in one place at one time, you can only focus on one thing at a time, you have 24 hours in a day, 7 days in a week. You have a body that requires sleep and energy. With those in mind, design what would be a balanced existence for yourself in, say, a given month. What would you need to do in that month in order for you to declare it a success?

· Notice how much you area already doing in one or more areas of life to make this a reality. Celebrate what you’re already doing!

· Finally, make a note, in this process, of any moments where the mind tells you can’t do or have something, or any moments where you feel anxious, guilty, scared. Those are good kinks in the game to work out with your coach.