There are so many lessons for our lives in random candies falling in a game.
By Marianne
If you have a smartphone, tablet or Facebook, you’ve probably played the game Candy Crush Saga. I fell prey to it about a month ago using it to relax at the end of a long work day. It’s fun, it’s relatively easy (or it was), it’s often frustrating and it has hidden rewards when you least expect it. That’s if you play it mindlessly. Once you begin to understand the game, everything changes. As I was playing the game, it reminded me that life is the same way. It’s fun at times, often frustrating and has hidden rewards when you least expect it. Once you understand the game of life, the strategies that help you design your life the way you want it, everything changes.
There are so many lessons for our lives in random candies falling in a game. Here’s what I learnt —
Just like the candy falling, events good or pad, people happy or otherwise, fall into our lives right from the start. We can’t control what or who shows up. We just have to keep playing the game of life. What we can control is how we react to them. We can get frustrated and give up, or figure things out and keep playing.
As we start to play (grow), we learn. Three of a kind forms a row and it drops out. If we want to win the game, we must be looking to eliminate those things that stand in the way of success, whatever that means to us.
Jelly means stuck! For many levels of the game, the goal is to remove the jelly. In life, we need to come up strategies to help us get unstuck too. We just need to gather the ones that work for us.
As we go through levels (grow up), life gets tougher. The good news is we get smarter — if we practice. If we keep noticing what works, if we learn. Learning is the key. It always has been. If we stay mindless we can still play the game and occasionally win, but we don’t get as far as we could and it can be a very stressful journey.
Those special rewards can be repeated over and over once we figure out how to make them happen. Some give you great power in the game hust as in life. They’re like great strategies. You come into life without knowing the best ones for dealing with stress, relationships, health and money. You can stumble on great ones every now and then and feel lucky. Or you can learn them from books, TV shows, from someone who’s figured them out and use them in your life so that you take charge of how to make your life easier and more successful.
You can ask for help. After you’re played a certain amount of time, the game has beed designed to stop you. Now their goal is to have you so hooked, you’ll pay to go to the next level. Or you can ask friend, usually on Facebook. I love that. I’ve never paid. I can wait till it lets me play again. I choose to be patient. In fact, I’m grateful that it stops me so I don’t spend too long playing games no matter how much fun or additive they are. I have a business to run and while I can justify a few minutes distraction, I certainly can’t let it use up too much time. I haven’t asked a Facebook friend for help yet but I like knowing I could. People would help me — at first. As long as I helped them when they needed it and didn’t constantly pester them with requests. Same as life. Help a friend when you can, but don’t take advantage of that friendship.
Don’t forget the goal. In the game you’re looking for three of a kind, for special candies but if you forget the goal of the game, you lose. And you lose quickly. Whether it’s to remove all the jelly the candies are stuck in or to bring all the fruit home, you’ve got to keep your eye on the finish line. You can play the game of life with no goal but you won’t get where you want to go. You’ll be blown about like an airplane without an autopilot or GPS. You life will be an endless game of maybe, an often frustrating one.
But if you know your goal, if you learn and use strategies along the way, if you’re patient as obstacles pop up — and they will both in the game and in life — you can really enjoy the process as you go along the journey.
