If Life is a Game, These are the Rules

Book by Cheri Carter-Scott, Review by Denice Moffat 

Cheri Carter-Scott, a motivational speaker and manage consultant, wrote this little 141 page gem in 1998. I’ve personally recommended this book to hundreds of my clients over the years. If Life is a Game is about listening to, trusting and honoring your inner knowing or voice (I call it the Still Small Voice). It’s the best and easiest-to-read self-help book on the market replete with true to live stories you can relate to. I think it will help you to see a different perspective on the “woes” of life and give you some healthy ways to handle what comes your way. There are ten rules in her book. I’ll give you a short paragraph summarizing each rule here:  

Rule #1: You will receive a body. The body you are given will be yours for the duration of your stay. Love it or hate it, accept it or reject it, it’s the only one you will receive in this lifetime and it will teach you some lessons if you let it. 

If self-esteem is a lesson that you need to learn, you will be tested over and over until you feel confident about who you are and understand and believe your intrinsic value. Your body may provide you with enough opportunities to work on this lesson. 

In my practice, I’ve noticed that people like certain parts of their body then treat other parts with despair. Your cells work in unison. When you don’t like parts of your body they do not communicate as well with each other. So, love yourself—your whole self and treat your body kindly. 

Rule #2: You will be presented with lessons. You are enrolled in a full-time informal school called “life.” Each day in this school you will have the opportunity to learn lessons. You may like the lessons or hate them, but you have designed them as part of your curriculum. 

The trick is to align yourself with your own unique path by learning your individual lessons. 

I’ve noticed that if you have a lesson your are not taking seriously, you have friends, family and co-workers with the same lesson in various stages of overcoming or working through the lesson. And if you really don’t see what’s happening, God brings you a pet with that lesson. So what are your friends going through? Have you been through that, too? Are you there for them? Or, are they there for you? 

What you resist persists. 

Rule #3: There are no mistakes, only lessons. Growth is a process of experimentation, a series of trials, errors, and occasional victories. The failed experiments are as much a part of the process as the experiments that work. 

So, if you choose to go down the “wrong” path, tomorrow is another day. Choose again and redirect. This chapter reminded me of one of my favorite poems along this line called, Life in Five Short Chapters. 

Rule #4: A lesson is repeated until learned. I have a girlfriend who has married the same husband seven times. But lots of people marry the same personality types over and over until they work on themselves enough to shift their vibration and align with a different personality type. Rule 4 involves identifying and releasing the patterns that you are repeating.  It involves becoming aware of your patterns, acknowledgement of them, choosing to release the pattern, creating a realistic plan and committing to take action to change negative thoughts and choices and celebrating the success of a new and higher thought pattern.   

Rule #5 Learning does not end. As long as you are in this body and in this life, you will have lessons. The lessons may change over time, but the will never end. The sooner you can envelope and rejoice in that knowledge the more you can live in the now and do your Life Purpose here. I like the concept of “See one, Do one, Teach one.” So, you see the learning that needs to be done, you practice it and then you mentor others who are trying to learn the same lessons. 

Rule #6: “There” is no better than “here”. It’s all about the journey, not the end result. When you accomplish one goal, more topics and goals will come up to work on. So, enjoy the journey. True abundance comes not from amassing material things, but rather from appreciating what you have. 

Rule #7: Others are only mirrors of you. Your reactions to other people are really just a barometer for how you perceive yourself. People who irritate you are actually angels in your life teaching you about aspects of your own personality or past hurts you need to love and forgive. Hippocrates said, “Healing is a matter of time, but it is sometimes also a matter of opportunity.” So take the opportunities with the perspective that everything you experience is a gift. 

Rule #8: What you make of your life is up to you. You already have all the tools and resources you need. What you do with them is up to you. Lots of people transform adversity into success. Choose to be one of them.

One of my favorite stories on this is the parable of the old donkey that fell in the dry well. Since the owner could not get the donkey out, the townspeople helped him alleviate the animals suffering by trying to bury the donkey alive. At first, the donkey was really afraid as the dirt was shoveled into the well, but he shook the dirt off his back and stepped up. The process continued hour after hour. With each scoopful of dirt, the donkey shook the dirt off, then stepped up. Eventually the donkey was able to step right out of the filled well. 

Life sometimes seems like a bunch of dirt being tossed into a well in an attempt to bury us alive. We don’t get through life without experiencing that. Will you step up or be buried? It’s your choice. 

Rule #9: All your answers lie inside of you. There’s a Hindu story about God and the angels talking about the creation of the planet. They’re saying, “Now that we’ve got the earth and we’ve got the sky and the mountains and the rivers and the moon and the stars, now we will create man.

Where shall we hide the truth of his being from him? One of them said. 

“Let’s hide it on the highest mountain top.” 

“No, eventually he will learn to scale the mountains, He will find it.” God said. 

“Let’s take it down to the very deepest part of the ocean.” 

“No, don’t hide it in the deepest part of the ocean. Eventually, man will learn how to go to the darkest, deepest part of the ocean. Don’t hide it there.” 

“Well, let’s hide it on the moon, then.” 

“No, eventually he’ll go to the moon and get it there.” 

Finally, they all knew…all at once, exactly where to hide the truth where mankind would never look for it and that was within himself. So all of the avatars, all the great teachers, all the saints and sages of all time have said there is a place in you that is absolutely holy. There is a place in you that is absolutely pure. There is a place in you that is divine. And it is God, and the kingdom is within you. 

All you need to do is look, listen and trust the Still Small Voice within. You already have all the answers possessed in your spiritual DNA.  If you don’t listen to that voice it becomes stronger and louder, sometimes bringing adversity into your path as a sign that you are not on the right path.  Stuart Wilde says, “Life was never meant to be a struggle.” And Wayne Dyer recommends that we “row our boat DOWN the stream.” I like to say, “If you try the door of opportunity and it is locked, try the next door.” You don’t have to pick the lock! 

Rule #10: You will forget all of this at birth. Remembering and forgetting are the dance of consciousness Cheri says. When you feel stuck, you have forgotten your truth. 

Life really is a game. The game of remembering. The goal is to remember here on Earth. The keys to remembering are our emotions. The more joyful we feel, the closer we are to winning the game. Trust and believe in yourself. 

Let the Game begin!