062 – You’re Either Winning or Losing in Your Teacher Life

My oldest son likes to invent and design his own board games. I love seeing his 10 year old brain bursting at the seams with creativity and enthusiasm. And I think his love of board games is rubbing off on me… Because I had a MAJOR light bulb moment the other day about a board game. The Ultimate Board Game. It felt like an epiphany. So simple. But so powerful and true. This is what I realized. Life is like a board game. There are rules for how the game works. And so often, like outraged preschoolers, we want to complain about the rules. We don’t think the rules are fair. We have ideas about how the rules could be “better.” But when we get fixated on how much we don’t like the rules… We miss out on all the fun. We forget that we could have spent our time WINNING rather than complaining. If we could only let go of how we “wish things could be…” We’d find that the rules of the game actually allow us to win whenever we want. If we could actually embrace the Game of Life the way it’s meant to be played… We could get really excited about the fact that… We’re 100% in charge of whether we’re winning or losing All. The. Time. It doesn’t matter how anyone else moves their pawns. And it doesn’t even matter which cards you pick up along the way. Winning is available to you at every moment of every day. It doesn’t matter if you have a challenging class. It doesn’t matter if your spouse isn’t helping out at home. It doesn’t matter if your kids are whining. And it doesn’t matter how many papers you have to grade. YOU get to decide what winning means for you. No one else gets a vote. You get to be in charge of how you think and feel about EVERYTHING. And you get to create whatever results you want. I can’t think of a more amazing game to play than the Game of Life. In this episode, you’ll learn: Why my favorite new metaphor for your #teacherlife is to think of it like a board game. Why it doesn’t do any good to argue with the already established Rules of Life. How to make winning inevitable in your teacher life Every. Single. Day.