Over the holidays I played monopoly for the first time since I was a child. It was the city edition which is a bit more challenging than the original. It was fun and very interesting at the same time.
What made it interesting was watching the response to whatever was going on in the game. Based on the roll of the dice and who was able to accumulate properties and build buildings, the roller coaster of emotions of winning and losing throughout the game. Yes, I was caught up on it, if someone was on a run, things got bleak, I might think about losing the game, other times I was ahead and got complacent and lost. It was a similar story from the other player, maybe even worse.
You see, if someone got a particular property the odds were pretty good that they would win the game, yet that was not always the case, things change based on the roll of the dice. A question went through my mind when I noticed someone was on a hot streak or a losing streak with the dice, are we able to influence the dice? It certainly appeared that way, perhaps we shook the dice more when winning who knows.
It wasn't long before someone wanted to give up and of course there was the monopoly gods not being kind to a player, which came up often. No, I didn't make that one up, it is a great illustration of the crazy stuff we resort to when things aren't going our way.
Whether it's a game of monopoly or the game of everyday life things happen and we don't get our way all of the time. So many people give up very quickly, get into blame or just start making things up to justify where we are.
Yet when we stay focused and stay on track things usually work out. Look at the race to be the republican nominee for the presidential race, it has been a roller coaster ride of front runners, things happened and they fell out of favor, made mistakes or dropped out. In sports a team might lose it's first three games then win the next three, there can be no rhyme nor reason things just happen beyond our control.
How is your mood when these things happen? Do you give up quickly or run some story about how things never work out for you? What if you were to cut out all of that stuff and just keep going making adjustments as you go along, how might things be. It's tempting to give up no doubt about that, no one likes to lose, yet someone has to.
If you think like me you aren't doing some of those things, then get a board game and a few people together and see how you get on, you may be surprised to notice how you respond. The odds are good that you will have the same response in other situations too, you just never noticed before.
