It's How You Play The Game: A Workbook for Creating Great Results in Your Life

It’s How You Play The Game

A Workbook for Creating Great Results in Your Life

Robert B. Levine, ED.S.

Ernie M. Williams, PH.D.

It’s How You Play The Game

A Workbook for Creating Great Results in Your Life

Robert B. Levine, ED.S.

Ernie M. Williams, PH.D.

Copyright © 2014 Robert B. Levine and Ernie M. Williams

Smashwords Edition

Table of Contents

INTRODUCTION

Dedication

1 WORKING ON LIFE

2 EXAMINING LIFE-GAMES

3 RECOGNIZING YOUR STYLE OF PLAY

4 BECOMING A 100% PLAYER

5 EXPOSING YOUR SABOTEUR

6 UNDERSTANDING LIFE’S BASIC OPERATING PRINCIPLE

7 DISCOVERING YOUR CHOICES

8 TAKING RESPONSIBILITY FOR YOUR LIFE

9 USING RESPONSIBLE LANGUAGE

10 SETTING GOALS

11 ASKING FOR WHAT YOU WANT

12 SAYING NO HAPPILY

13 ACKNOWLEDGING YOURSELF AND OTHERS

14 AVOIDING NEGOS

15 RELEASING EMOTIONS

16 COMMUNICATING EFFECTIVELY

17 TAKING CARE OF UNFINISHED BUSINESS

18 MAKING AGREEMENTS THAT WORK

19 CONCLUSION

APPENDIX A: PARAMETERS FOR CREATING GREAT RESULTS IN YOUR LIFE

APPENDIX B: RESPONSIBLE LANGUAGE

APPENDIX C: ACCUSATORY EMOTION-WORDS

APPENDIX D: LOVE OR LUV?

Ernie’s Acknowledgments

Robert’s Acknowledgments

INTRODUCTION

In beginner’s mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert’s there are few.

– Shunryu Suzuki

IT’S HOW YOU PLAY THE GAME is about the Game of Life. It’s a big game! – so let none of us pretend to be experts. In this book and in life, we are engaged in an inquiry, a questioning and a discovery of life itself, one that is always in progress.

IT’S HOW YOU PLAY THE GAME is a collection of provisional conclusions. We don’t claim that they are true. Strictly speaking, we aren’t concerned with what is true, but with what works. The ideas presented here work. Thinking and arguing about them may be intellectually stimulating, but the only way to see whether they have anything to offer is to put them into practice.

IT’S HOW YOU PLAY THE GAME is not a series of intellectual exercises. It is a workbook for creating great results in your life, and every chapter is committed to those results. In a sense every chapter is about the same thing – being conscious in the present moment: conscious of who you are, the situation you are in, and the tools that are available to you for creating great results.

LET’S BEGIN AT THE BEGINNING TOGETHER

We began writing IT’S HOW YOU PLAY THE GAME with two thoughts in mind. The first is that someone will read this book who has never thought about any of the ideas in it. While that may be unlikely, one virtue of letting it guide our writing is that we can all start together, at the beginning, without wondering who knows what, how much is too much to say, and how much is too little. The second thought is that someone will read the book who has thought about all the ideas in depth, someone who has put considerable time and energy into his or her own inquiry about life and what works.

To the first, the true beginner: We have written as clearly and simply as we know how. Virtually anyone who can read can understand all the ideas. However, we don’t intend IT’S HOW YOU PLAY THE GAME for beginners only, and in several chapters we have drawn technical distinctions and given explanations that are, by their nature, complex. Those sections will be of most value to those who have thought about the topics before encountering them here. If you reach a section that still seems difficult after a second reading, you may want to skip it for now. The ideas in it will fall into place as you read more and especially as you put what you do understand into practice.

To the second, the veteran: Welcome back to beginner’s mind, to the realm of many possibilities. If you encounter ideas that seem obvious and are tempted to hurry past them – don’t. Consider going even slower than usual. Epictetus, the great Stoic philosopher, said, "It is impossible for human beings to begin to learn that which they think they know. We human beings sell ourselves short when we don’t take the time to reconsider what we think we already know. As Suzuki might say, don’t reduce your possibilities by being an expert."

If you are already accomplished at the skills in IT’S HOW YOU PLAY THE GAME, congratulations on your achievement; we celebrate it with you. Consider, however, that in the game of life and in sports the very best athletes must work the hardest to progress.

With good coaching, a beginning sprinter might take a full second off her time in the 100-meters in a month or less. World-class sprinters, on the other hand, train with the very best coaches for four years between Olympics, and they measure their progress in tenths or, more often, hundredths of a second.

In the baseball movie Bull Durham, a talented rookie pitcher Nuke Laloosh (Tim Robbins) is called up from the minor leagues to the majors. Veteran catcher Crash Davis (Kevin Costner) says to him:

Do you know what the difference between hitting .250 and .300 is? It’s twenty-five hits. Twenty-five hits in 500 at-bats is fifty points, okay? There’s six months in a season – that’s about twenty-five weeks. That means if you just get one extra flare a week, just one . . . a gork . . . you get a ground-ball with eyes . . . you get a dying quail . . . just one more dying quail a week, and you’re in Yankee Stadium.

Excellence is most often measured in small increments – sometimes, almost unimaginably small. If you are already accomplished at getting great results in your life, all the more reason to work hard. That’s how you will take your game to the next level.

ENGAGE! – Do the Exercises

The Game of Life is a contact sport. You have probably read or heard some really smart, perhaps even profound, ideas about life that you simply don’t remember to use – exactly at the moment when they would be the most useful. That’s what the exercises are for. Assuming that the ideas you have heard and read have some merit, the reason you aren’t getting better results from them is that you aren’t putting them into practice. To get full value for the time and money you are spending – to get great results – do the exercises. IT’S HOW YOU PLAY THE GAME won’t do it to you. You have to do it yourself.

For a number of years, one of the authors lived near a small hospital. Some mornings he would wake up to find a school-bus-load of ketchup-covered teenagers lying on the highway as part of a disaster-preparedness exercise. The EMS team would take them to the local emergency room where nurses and doctors would practice mass-casualty response. The medical professionals were too smart to think that they would just remember what to do at the right time. Don’t trust your memory, either. The way to make good choices when they are essential is to practice your skills while the stakes are low.

In some exercises we ask you to give your answers to questions before we tell you our answers or those others have given. You may be tempted to skip your part and just see what we or others have to say. Don’t! Your active participation is essential – it makes the ideas concrete and increases the probability that you will use them when the stakes are high.

Other exercises are opportunities to see that the ideas apply to your life. We have presented each of them many times, and we know how easy it is for people to think that some of the principles have nothing to do with them. That’s extremely unlikely. Don’t reject any idea out of hand. In the most basic sense, we human beings aren’t really so different from one another. You may find, as many people do, that an insight which doesn’t seem to have anything to do with your life turns out to be one of the most effective for you.

KEEP TRACK OF YOUR PROGRESS

From the very beginning of your work with IT’S HOW YOU PLAY THE GAME, notice the progress you make as you complete the exercises and apply the ideas on your own. As the chapters unfold, we will develop the idea of progress reports more fully, but, at the start, track your progress simply by writing it down, telling it to someone, or (preferably) both. The exercises will be more powerful and more fun if you share them with someone, and so will the progress you make. It doesn’t have to be the same someone each time, but wouldn’t it be good to have someone in your life who knows the history of your progress? Get a buddy (and tell her to buy her own book!).

TAILOR YOUR READING TO FIT YOUR INTERESTS

All the ideas in IT’S HOW YOU PLAY THE GAME are connected. While some chapters prepare the ground for later ones, their very connectedness implies that their order is a bit arbitrary. For example, Discovering Your Choices (Chapter 7) is closely related to Saying No Happily (Chapter 12) even though other chapters intervene. We have placed the ideas in an order that we think will make them easy to understand. However, we know that what seems best to us may not be best for you, so we have indicated the interconnections between chapters by cross-referencing the ideas. If you discover that it makes sense for you to read Chapter 12 immediately after Chapter 7, follow your intuition. We wish you good reading, good practice, and good results in the Game of Life. In the final analysis, one thing will determine both your results and your satisfaction with life itself . . . it’s how you play the game.

A SPECIAL ACKNOWLEDGMENT

To The Third Musketeer, Rochelle Yaeger Morris, for her invaluable contributions to the evolution of IT’S HOW YOU PLAY THE GAME. Through her 35 years of coaching more than 4,000 students, she continues to be our most valued comrade in presenting the principles for creating great results in life.

TO MARILYN MYERS

We dedicate our work to you, our dearest friend,

who inspired transformation

and compassion throughout your life

and in the process of your passing.

We are grateful for your profound

healing influence on both of us.

In the Game of Life, you exemplified

what it means to be a 100% Player.

We love you, we thank you,

and we will

never forget you.

– Ernie and Robert

1

WORKING ON LIFE

A human being has to choose.

What matters is to know what one wants.

– Andre Gide

WHO ARE YOU?

You are someone whose life already works.

IT’S HOW YOU PLAY THE GAME is a workbook for creating great results in your life. Although virtually anyone can improve their results by using the tools it contains, this book wasn’t written for people who are broken. It is intended for a broad group of people, from those who already feel fantastic to those who say, I never felt better in my life – and I think it’s about time I did!¹

You are interested in creating great results.

You are open to exploring new ideas, and you are willing to put all your ideas, old and new, into practice. You would like to get even more of what you want from life. You are ready to take the next step toward making your life work even better.

WHAT DO YOU WANT?

You are willing to ask yourself one of life’s most important questions. To create great results, ask and re-ask it, answer and re-answer it, frequently: What do I want?

Many people don’t have a clear idea of their own wants and desires. Consequently, they don’t have a clear, specific picture of their goals. There is a good chance that some of the people you know haven’t spent much time seriously asking themselves exactly what makes them happy. Others have asked, but not recently.

When people don’t know what they want, their lives have no direction – or, to put it more accurately, if their lives do have a direction, it isn’t one they had much say in. When people don’t know what they want, any information they have about how life works won’t be of much use to them. Consider the possibility that 30% of creating great results is articulating and visualizing your goals clearly.

If you wanted to plan a trip, wouldn’t one of your first decisions be about where you wanted to go? Your answer might be vague (Somewhere Out West) or specific (Golden Gate Park in San Francisco), but, without it, any other information you had would be difficult to apply. You could own the most detailed, accurate, up-to-date atlas of the United States, but, if you didn’t have a destination in mind, you wouldn’t be able to put the map to much use. The information in IT’S HOW YOU PLAY THE GAME is like a road map of certain parts of life. To put the information to its best use, ask yourself where you want to go in life: What do I want?

Only you have the answer. The list of things that you want may be fairly standard – a good relationship with your family, more and closer friendships, love, a stronger relationship with God, more money, more or better sex, a house, a car, etc. We won’t suggest what you should or should not want. We are like clerks selling tools in a do-it-yourself store called Working on Life. What you use the tools to create is up to you. We will tell you how we and others have used them. We will help you with the work, but it is your life. You create it the way you want it. The tools and skills for creating great results are the same, no matter what you want.

Be honest with yourself about what you really do want, and what you really don’t. Your willingness to take a realistic look at yourself is essential. If you are much concerned with what you should want and what you should not, you will either ignore your honest desires (because you should not want them), or your commitment to your desires will be halfhearted since, at least partly, you will want them because you ought to. Lacking enthusiasm and commitment, you will have difficulty reaching your goals, and, if you do reach them, you won’t find them very satisfying.

Later, in Chapter 10, we will talk about how to set effective goals based on your answers to the question What do I want? The more specific you are about what you want, the more likely you are to get it. Remember the road map analogy. If you wanted to go Somewhere Out West, many roads would take you there, and when you arrived you would be more or less satisfied, depending on which part of Out West you happened to get to. If you specifically wanted to go to Golden Gate Park, fewer roads would take you there, but it is much more likely that you would be satisfied when you arrived, assuming that you were honest with yourself about what you wanted in the first place.

The more specific your goal, the more likely

you will be to attain it, and the more likely

you will be to enjoy it when you do.

WHY SHOULD YOU GET WHAT YOU WANT? – Self-Less, Selfish, and Self-More

In your list of priorities, where do put yourself?

There are conflicting schools of thought about how much we human beings should value ourselves. One school says that we should give our selves up to serve others first. We will call this the Self-Less School. Many of us learned to be self-less as children. Diane, a 35-year-old office manager:²

I was taught that a ‘good woman’ should take care of her husband and family first. Then she could take care of herself (that is, if she had any strength left!).

Sometimes our society seems to admire people who put aside their own happiness to help others, and some people report that they get joy and satisfaction from the self-less path – but many do not. They give to the point where it doesn’t serve them, the point at which their own needs aren’t met. Helping others is admirable, but don’t fall into the trap of thinking something is wrong with you if you aren’t naturally drawn to taking care of others more than you take care of yourself.

In the face of societal pressure, you may find yourself unwillingly, perhaps unconsciously, taking care of others and ignoring yourself. If you do, you suffer, and so do those around you – family, friends, and coworkers. The good news is that it works the other way, too. Roger, a 44-year-old architect:

When I take care of myself, I am happy, and I’m a good person to be around, but, believe me, you don’t want to deal with me when I’m doing something I really don’t want to do.

The Self-Less School sometimes calls people who don’t agree with it selfish, but we say that the opposite of self-less is self-more, and we recommend being self-more. Usually, if you take care of yourself first, you will have a healthier, happier, more desirable self to offer others. That self can do an even better job of supporting others – which is, after all, the goal of the Self-Less School.

People who don’t take care of themselves, or who put others first more than they really want to, act self-less without being self-less. When they do, they carry around unnecessary stress. At worst, they can be angry and bitter; when they are, acting self-less backfires. Self-sacrifice that is not fully rewarding can lead to frustration, making it difficult to accomplish anything effectively – especially helping others. Do you know anyone who takes care of everyone else while she herself does not get taken care of?

If you take care of yourself, you will be more powerful and pleasant to be with. You will set an example for your family, friends, and coworkers, since they will learn much more from the example you are than from the words you say. When you take care of yourself, you are an invitation for others to take care of themselves, too. Consider: All significant teaching is done by example.

Have you seen that bumper sticker? – the one that says:

If Mama ain’t happy – Ain’t nobody happy!

Isn’t that how it is? When you aren’t happy, doesn’t it take its toll on the people around you? When you are frustrated, you have a less-evolved self to offer others. You only do your best for others when you give consciously, and a frustrated, self-sacrificing person isn’t a fully conscious one. If you take good care of yourself, you will be able to take better care of other people.³

To take care of yourself

is to take care of others.

WHY TAKE CARE OF OTHERS?

Just as it doesn’t work to take care of others at your own expense, it doesn’t work to take care of yourself at theirs.

You probably know that the Greek philosopher Socrates was accused of purposely corrupting the youth in ancient Athens. He replied to these charges that only a foolish man would knowingly corrupt the people in his community because he would then find himself living around corrupted people who would do him harm in their turn. Socrates knew that by hurting those around him he would also hurt himself.

It is also true that by helping those around us, we help ourselves.

Most people like to do a certain amount of personal charity work, such as giving for no apparent reason or helping another person out of a tight situation. If there is something basically, inherently good about helping others, at least part of the goodness is that, as Emerson said, It is one of the beautiful compensations of this life that no one can sincerely try to help another without helping himself.

To take care of others

is to take care of yourself.

What is Helping Others?

However, be clear that you are helping others, not just helping them to be dependent on you. When you support someone, do you really want them to keep coming back every few days for more? Have you ever found yourself surrounded by needy people? Isn’t it more rewarding to be around people who regularly take care of themselves? When you are self-more you support them in that goal. Margaret, a 39-year-old mother of three, works for a wholesale clothing company:

If I strive to make others more responsible for themselves – for example, my children as they get older – it will help them develop a self-sufficient attitude that will serve them long after I am gone. And it will make my life easier because there will be less pressure on me.

As Margaret’s children learn to get things done on their own, they will develop the self-esteem that comes with trusting their ability to deal effectively with their lives.

As you focus on the importance of taking care of yourself, both for yourself and for other people, you may come to agree with John, a 42-year-old father who runs his family’s business:

What I wanted never really mattered. What everyone else wanted did. That will never be true again!

WHO ARE WE?

Robert was born in Boston and grew up on Miami Beach. He teaches the psychology of personal growth at Hillsborough Community College, in Tampa, Florida. Ernie grew up in central Alabama and teaches philosophy at Saint Leo University, 30 miles north of Tampa. We both have a keen interest in communication and the full range of human relationships, from intimate to casual. Shortly after we met, in 1974, we decided to be best friends. The skills we brought to the process of becoming friends and the discoveries we have made as the process has continued led to IT’S HOW YOU PLAY THE GAME.

When we met, we were teaching on the same campus, and a colleague introduced us. For the most part, Robert immediately liked Ernie, although he found him to be a bit stiff and judgmental. Ernie was more skeptical about Robert; he thought he was arrogant and pushy. When we discovered that the two lakes we lived on were joined by a canal, we began making half-hour canoe trips to visit each other.

A few weeks later, Robert asked Ernie if he had a best friend. No, said Ernie, do you?

No. Do you want to be best friends?

However strange that question may seem (especially since we hardly knew each other), be sure that it sounded just as odd to Ernie. He wasn’t sure he had ever had a best friend. He certainly had never called anyone that, and he didn’t actually like Robert yet. Still, he was intrigued by the straightforward approach. How would we go about that? he asked.

Let’s start by making some agreements, Robert said, and we began forging our friendship. (We came to understand that all relationships are based on agreements. We discuss this in Chapter 18.)

Think about the challenge of beginning a relationship, a close one, without knowing very much about each other. If two virtual strangers can begin (and, with work, sustain, from 1974 until now) a friendship using the principles in IT’S HOW YOU PLAY THE GAME, surely the same principles can help you strengthen your relationships with the people you are already close to.

We don’t want to imply that making friends is always easy or that a profound friendship can be fashioned overnight. But we have had the experience, a number of times, that establishing or improving a friendship or other relationship does not have to be difficult, and it doesn’t have to take a long time.

Have you been thinking about what you want? Whatever your list includes, it’s a safe bet that some items on it deal with relationships. While IT’S HOW YOU PLAY THE GAME addresses other significant areas of life, relationships are a central focus because they hold such an essential place in the lives of human beings. Our friendship gives us the perfect opportunity to apply the principles in this book, to work on our lives, and to see how we play the game.

WHAT DO WE OFFER YOU?

We didn’t create the principles you will find here. In the truest sense, no one invented these parameters for creating great results.⁴ Like the laws of physics, the laws in this book existed before anyone knew them. They had to be discovered, and they have been – over and over again. They are included in dozens, perhaps hundreds, of good books. Even people who don’t like to read know some of them. We – all of us who will use this book – live in a media-intensive world where we get information effortlessly, almost by osmosis. Many adults are aware of all the major principles of effective living as articulated by the major authors, many without having read any of the books or even knowing the authors’ names.

However, as with the laws of physics, knowing is not enough. You can say E=mc² without having any idea how to put Einstein’s theory to good use. Being able to recite the principles of effective living is not the same as understanding them and integrating them into your life. To be of value, they must be applied. You must, in a sense, discover them all over again – for yourself – by experimenting with them in your own life. We find that we rediscover them, virtually daily, by putting them into action. If we don’t, they become merely good ideas, rather than effective, practical principles.

There are many ways to express ideas, and different people understand different expressions. That’s why these principles have been articulated so many times. We will explain them as simply and easily as we know how, and we will show you how to work with them effectively.

To be honest, neither of us enjoys reading strictly for information. We have an affinity with others who enjoy discovering through practice – those who, for example, want to learn how their new software program works by mousing around with it rather than by reading the manual. Our goal has been to write a book that we would enjoy: one that is useful, informal, and fun.

Everything in this book is operative in our own lives: in our careers, our friendships and primary relationships, and with our families. If we didn’t apply the principles, we couldn’t know that they work. In writing, we have followed the rule: Do not attempt to teach what you have not experienced personally. We aren’t much interested in anyone’s ideas (including our own) about how the world must or should be or about what might or might not work. We are only interested in what experience tells us does work. And our experience, working with literally thousands of people, tells us that the principles in IT’S HOW YOU PLAY THE GAME will work for anyone. Look at our pictures on the back cover and be honest. Do we fit your image of people who get a high percentage of the things they want in life? We may, but if we don’t, that’s all the better because we do get a high percentage. Doesn’t that give you hope?

These principles don’t care who they work for. They work for us. They will work for you. They will work for anyone who uses them. No matter who you are, you can get a great deal of what you want in life.

The principles of effective living aren’t prejudiced. They are equal opportunity employees.

WHY DID WE WRITE THIS BOOK?

We want to make money, of course! – but that hasn’t been our main objective. The primary motive has been to work on a project together, to record our insights as friends who share a quest for increasingly more fulfilling lives. Beyond that, we are motivated by the thoroughly self-more desire to provide information about effective living to as many people as possible, knowing that when anyone’s life becomes healthier, all our lives improve – a lesson we learned from Socrates (p. 4).

SO WHAT ARE YOU GOING TO DO?

The path to more effective living begins when you declare your intention to (re)discover exactly who you are and what you want. At first, you don’t even have to be good at it. All that matters is that you commit yourself to your goal. As you set foot on the path, ask yourself:

Do I really want to take a closer look at my life?

After all, you may have reasons not to take that look. You might think, I’m doing all right; why should I look now?

It’s a good question. Since IT’S HOW YOU PLAY THE GAME is for people whose lives are already working, our assumption is that you are, indeed, doing all right. The real question is, could life offer you more, and do you want to make that more happen? The information in this book will be of value only for those who clearly want their lives to improve.

If you decide to play The Game of Effective Living, play hard. Play like your life depends on it. Play in a way that is worthy of your goals. Remember, The Game of Life is a contact sport. If you are not yet ready to commit yourself to a high level of play, honor that decision, but above all, be honest with yourself. If you are willing to be truthful about who you are and what you want, you have come to the right do-it-yourself store. The next question starts your self-examination.

What Makes You Happy?

⁵

In the space below, make a list of things that make you happy. Give yourself no more

than five or ten minutes, and write fast. (Neatness doesn’t count.) Write the thoughts as they occur, in no special order. Write everything you think of. Don’t censor your thoughts. (After all, you don’t have to show your list to anyone.) And don’t erase anything you have written.

THINGS THAT MAKE ME HAPPY

Now take another look at your list and examine your writing process. Did you censor any of your thoughts? Did anything occur to you that you didn’t write down? If so, write it now, and notice your reasons for passing over it the first time it came to mind. Add anything else that occurs to you to the list.

Next, in the numbered spaces below, list the top ten items from your list of things that make you happy. List more than ten things, if you want to, but don’t stop until you get to ten, and do your best to list them in order, with whatever makes you most happy at the top.

THINGS THAT MAKE ME HAPPY

1. ____________________

2. ____________________

3. ____________________

4. ____________________

5. ____________________

6. ____________________

7. ____________________

8. ____________________

9. ____________________

10. ___________________

Now ask:

How much am I getting of what I want?

Write your answer as a percentage in the box below. If you think you are getting about half of everything you want in life – all the things you listed above and everything else you can think of that you want – write 50%. If you don’t know the answer (it isn’t an easy