Stranger than Fiction

Restored from the Empower Network archive (2011–2017), lightly edited to meet our current advertising standards. Views are the original author’s.

“A Riddle Wrapped in a Mystery Inside an Enigma” ~Sir Winston Churchill

Do you believe in coincidence?  I don’t.  That doesn’t mean we can always explain what happens.  We could drive ourselves mad looking for the relationship behind some of the more unnerving seemingly random events.

You might want to cue the Twilight Zone theme then sit back and relax. It’s story time.

There’s a blog post that’s been niggling away at me, trying to written.  If that seems to be odd phrasing, it’s because that’s the way it feels.  Most days, I follow a routine, checking email, others’ blog posts, the list of potential topics that I keep, and then settle on a topic and write the blog.

This blog on the other hand comes to me unbidden with snippets of lines and dialogue just popping into my head.  The basic premise is that playing casual computer games can improve your life immensely.

Before you jump to the conclusion that this is all just a sneaky way to bring up my SkyGames business again, I need to point out the many of my examples are not games currently on the SkyGames site. (I did throw the link in for good measure.) For my friends and relatives that sometimes see me “wasting” time playing games on the computer and think that I’m trying to justify it, I’ve got some pretty solid examples of lessons learned.

This morning I woke of singing the refrain of Kenny Rogers’ The Gambler.

Come on everybody, clap your hands and sing along, “You gotta know when to hold them, know when to fold them, know when to walk away and know when to run.  You never count your money when you’re sitting at the table; they’ll be time enough for counting, when the game is done.”

Today was the day this blog was going to get out.  I started my normal routine.  I had almost the whole thing written in my head when my daughter’s boyfriend brought me a coffee and I explained what I was writing.  I started typing, and the next thing I knew, I had opened a new document and was writing the Laugh Ha Ha Ha blog.  Strange, but. . .

Here are the insights I wanted to share:

• Sudoku demonstrates that sometimes we gain more wisdom from knowing where something doesn’t belong than we do trying to figure out where it does belong.
• Poker shows us “You gotta know when. . .” Sorry, I can’t sing it again.
• Match 3 games show us that we can get so involved in making the easy moves away from the main objective that even though we are racking up some big points, time runs out before we achieve the objective.
• Word Scramble teaches us that by rearranging things, like the letters, we can gain an entirely new perspective.
• Spider Solitaire, the full 4 suit version (I don’t think you can lose at the 1 suit version) confirms the idea of look before you leap because sometimes that really easy move will block the ones that would have let you clear out a whole row.
• Tetris like games teach us to balance waiting for the perfect move with not letting the field fill up.
• All of these casual games give us the chance to practice expecting the best hand of card or layouts and asking our subconscious to take find the perfect moves.

There is no scientific evidence that anyone besides me would come up with any of this.  My relatives that have stuck with reading the post this far may be convinced that I really am off my rocker.

But there is more to this story and here’s where it gets down right eerie.

I’d already met my Empower blog commitment for the day and was beginning to convince myself that this whole idea was just a little too off the wall to really turn into a post.  Besides, I needed to show some IBO Spirit with some comments and sharing.

Cue that Twilight Zone theme again. . .

I stumbled across a post by Silvia Shamus.  Her title was intriguing, “Do Not Let the Peacock Syndrome Intimidate You,”  but we weren’t associates yet so the only way I would have ever seen this post is to be looking at the IBO Dashboard during the exact 2 minutes or so that the blog post notice was showing.

The key words for her post were “procrastination, believe it when I see it, wait for results, get around to it, have faith, put it aside.”  They have absolutely nothing to do with my persistent blog post that wanted to get seen and yet. . . the closing line to her post. . .

Come on everybody, clap your hands and sing along one more time, “You gotta know when to hold them, know when to fold them, know when to walk away and know when to run.”

Let your dreams run free,

Certified Life Coach
NLP Master Practitioner