Posts Tagged ‘life skills’

February 8th, 2009 Have We Been Played?

Have you ever been in a social situation where you have felt yourself on the outside? And when you looked at who was on the inside, it simply made no sense. They weren’t any smarter than you, better looking than you, or superior to you in any discernible way – yet they were on the inside, and you were on the outside, looking in.

Or have you ever noticed how we you can work your tail off and have very little to show for it while others seem to glide through life effortlessly, without a care in the world? Even when they do stumble –get caught breaking rules, get fired, or even screw up completely, they always seem to land on their feet. How is that?

Did you ever feel that there is a game and you are on the outside of it? As if there were a secret that they share – some unspoken, invisible code that only they understood.

Well you were right! Over the course of my life I have encountered the same thing over and over. I’ve run companies in Eastern Europe, owned a construction and development company here in Canada. I’ve worked in small business, big business and government on both sides of the Atlantic. No matter the environment – at the club, on the job, even at home in with our own family, I began to see the same pattern playing out over and over.

Bit by bit I figured it out – the hidden dance, the other secret, the one no one talks about. In my mind this is the real secret! I invested over 30 years of thought into this problem and I believe I have cracked the code.

Now this is all very well and good but how does it help us in our lives in the here and now?

Well, it helps us to know the score and not be blindsided by what life throws at us.

It helps us to be proactive – perceive and react to situations before they arise- so we can get nip them in the bud or take evasive action to sidestep the problem altogether.

It can help us to engineer the outcome that we want in our lives.

It provides us with security so that we protect ourselves and our loved ones, not just today, but in the future as well.

Sometimes life just happens and we find ourselves in a tight spot with our backs to the wall. Knowing this game, the players, and how this Game is played can be invaluable in helping us to extricate ourselves from these tight spots.

And perhaps more important than all the above, understanding the Game and coming to know the Players; helps us to live our lives as we wish; instead of the way in which others wish us to, we feel we have to, or still worst, the way we’ve been forced to.