A Beautiful Game – and I’m Not Talking About Football

Happy New Year – I hope your holiday was everything you wanted?

Your Best Year Yet?

If you’ve started January worrying about what you’re going to do this year a short story I shared on YouTube on new year’s day, that you can also read on my blog, might help calm the overwhelm.

The story is entitled The New Year and is about a year realising it only has that one year – of 365 days - to achieve everything it needed to and the sense of panic that emerged and the insight it got to bring a sense of perspective and calm back.

My Beautiful Game – An Overview

I took an intention to embrace my eldership / elderhood for a Transformation Game this week and was so inspired and enthused by the outcome I thought I’d share some of the key highlights for you – highlights that can apply to any goal in life.

1. The wording of your goal is more important than you think
2. You are already what you need
3. Life is a game or assignment
4. Impatience is slowing you down
5. Have faith and trust in your higher self

If you want to understand a little more about the game before reading further, whilst not essential, my highlights of a game with the intention of finding work/life balance might help.

My Beautiful Game – The Top Five Highlights

My initial intention was “I intended to step into 2025 with enthusiasm and a newfound purpose for myself, my life and my business”

1.? The wording of your goal is more important than you think

As I’ve discovered with 25 years of facilitating Transformation Games, coaching sessions, and during my 5-day mindset challenge a few years ago - if you start with wording A for your goal, don’t be surprised if wording M/N/O or P is the one that lights your fire.

It’s so easy to think the wording isn’t important and to just get on with the planning and taking action.

And yet, it’s the definition of the goal that determines the destination and it’s that which inspires the motivation to take the necessary action – especially on a cold dark winter’s day when there’s no sign of progress and you might feel like giving up.

Two initial tweaks made a difference to my intention

• ‘Step into 2025’ was changed to ‘start the year’ (it felt more accurate and relatable because otherwise I could get distracted wondering how I ‘step’ into a year – yes, I know that makes me smile too since I use metaphor so much).
• I added ‘into my eldership’ to the end. (It’s a cue for me that the goal isn’t just a repeat of previous year’s goals - I want something different. A reminder that ‘what works as a stream won’t for the river and what worked for the river won’t for the ocean’ - I need to bring my current self to the goal and my life not my past self).

It was similar when I had a goal to ‘write my book’. After a few tweaks it became ‘write an inspirational book that will make a difference’!

During my virtual five-day mindset challenge a few years ago, day one was supposed to cover defining the goal, and yet many people were still refining their goal on day five because it deserved the respect and time to get it right (which has me wondering if a goal setting 5-day challenge would be of interest - do let me know).

How can you refine your goal to make it feel, sound, and/or look more inspiring?

2.? You are already what you need

I said I wanted to be enthused and the first card I got was a guardian angel of enthusiasm – ie the overarching energy for the whole game was going to be enthusiasm.

It felt like I was being reminded that enthusiasm was an inside job - there for the asking -not something I had to take action to bring into being.

It’s as if that’s who I am so when I’m being me then it’s going to be there – and perhaps, more importantly, when it’s not there I’m listening to the musts, oughts and shoulds of other people too much.

How might you be asking for something that’s inherently and wholeheartedly you?

3. Life is a game or assignment

Two cards had me considering how I relate to my life were:

• Tough assignments are only given to the best students
• You practice letting your highest self play the game

If life is an assignment or game then life is about trial and error, for testing things out, learning, adapting and getting better over time.

We certainly don’t wait until we’ve written the perfect essay before we submit it – we try our best with the time we have, submit it and then wait for feedback.

We might like it if we get 100% for an assignment but we don’t expect it – we accept a lower % and know that over time we’ll improve our score as a result of the feedback.

How might seeing your current situation as an assignment or game take some of the pressure off getting it 100% accurate or perfect and allow you to take action?

4. Impatience is slowing you down

I got the “I’m tired of waiting” setback on the spiritual level – in fact, after zooming fairly effortlessly up the physical, emotional and mental levels, all of my setbacks and pain arose on the spiritual level!

For me the impatience of being tired of waiting results in a number of things

• I don’t take time out (because I want to make things happen and get there NOW and then as a result get tired and lose my enthusiasm and creativity)
• I don’t take time to really listen to my intuition (so I make silly decisions)
• I rush ahead (missing crossroads I should have turned off at)
• I get anxious (a mindset not supportive of making great decisions or actions)
• I end up in places I don’t want to be (wasting time as I have to backtrack or cut across boggy moorland to get back on track!)

How is your impatience setting you back? And how can you release it (see final highlight for a suggestion)?

5.? Have faith and trust in your higher self

After the game, I went for a walk, and as I watched this heron for over 20 minutes I laughed that the heron’s patience was better than mine ie I left the heron still looking for a fish – with I assume trust and faith that if it kept doing what it was doing it would eventually achieve its goal.

This felt like it affirmed the setback in 4 above and two further cards:

• My personality is radiant with trust
• Afraid, through lack of faith, to let go and lose control

It’s as if the need for perfection, to know where I’m doing, to know where I will end up paralyses me – and yet if I slow down enough to listen to my intuition or higher self and have faith and trust in its guidance I will be amazed at where I end up (I did after all land on the transformation square of which there is only 1 in on each life path)!

How can you have faith in yourself?

Landscaping Your Life YouTube Channel

I thought a lot about my Landscaping your Life YouTube channel whilst playing the game because I can certainly feel the impatience of wanting to get to the end goal now – despite knowing it’s a journey.

A journey that means I’m now adding a #patternsofpeace in nature short every Sunday to help kick-start the week with peace and calm, and next week will be the start of a weekly Nature as your coach video based on a Landscaping Your Life coaching card set I’m developing where a landscape asks you questions about a situation you’d like more insight about (will share more about that in the next newsletter).

And Finally

If you’d like to start the year with a facilitated Transformation Game with me as your guide do get in touch as I do have some availability in Jan/Feb before I start travelling to deliver training again. The game takes 3 hours per person (so a 4-person game would be done over two days) with the solo game being able to be delivered virtually – 2+ players do need to be face to face.

Alison x

The process, the insight, setback, and angel cards used here are from the Transformation Game ? Innerlinks - www.innerlinks.com. With Transformation Games available to buy from Amazon – see the Innerlinks site about where to get non-English versions of the game.