Lessons I have Learned from Games Part 2

by Wendy Byford
In Part 1 of this series, I talked about learning to Let Go. That was my first experience of learning from a game. This lesson applies to all parts of my life, not just business. Take my bedroom carpet, for example. When we moved into our current home, this carpet was a beautiful shade of off-white. Now, five years later, it is an intriguing shade of spotted banana.

You see, somewhere along the way I decided to pull up the carpet we had installed in the bedrooms and replace it with the same hardwood flooring we have in the rest of the house.

Having made that decision, it made no sense to me to have the carpet cleaned, because, after all, it was going to be replaced. So I waited for the right time to pull the funds from other projects, staunchly refusing to give in as the months ticked on. I knew that as soon as I had the carpet cleaned, the Universe would hand me the funds. So what you may ask? Well, it was the principle of the thing. Waste not and all those other lessons learned from parents who had been through the Great Depression. Now I am having my carpet cleaned; and I am diligently looking for other areas where my principles are getting in the way.

Last week, I told you I would talk about Farm Town, the second game I play. Farm Town is a game accessed through Facebook. You start with a small plot of land and a few coins, and you build your farm into a mega-combine employing others to harvest for you while you run along behind them plowing and reseeding. It is an ingenious game that starts by taking a few minutes here and there and rapidly grows to an hour or so a day. Oops, did I say that out loud?

The first lesson I learned in Farm Town wasn’t so much a first time lesson as it was a confirmation of something I knew but needed to internalize everywhere, not just at my desk. Cash flow is King. You see, at the end of the day, if you don’t have enough coins to buy seed, you can’t plant. And if you can’t plant, you will have nothing to harvest and therefore nothing to sell for more coins. So my strategy was simple – plow and reseed before buying anything – even fences for the animals. Yes, you guessed it; this game has a lot of moving parts. Spare cash went into buying more land to expand the farm and make more coins from growing more crops. This, of course, meant that every reseeding took more and more coins. But I stuck to my strategy and today I have a 300,000 coin farm house and a fully planted mega-farm. Loral Langemeier would be proud.

So what does this have to do with real life? Everything. Money that could go into new flooring, for example, sits in a reserve set aside for our rental real estate. Good thing because the air conditioning just went out in one of the units. Impulse purchases are a thing of the past. Excess funds have to be reinvested to earn more coins. And one day the Universe will bring me the deal I envision, enabling me to replace the carpet in the bedroom; but only after the plowing and reseeding are done.

So how does cash flow work for you? Next lesson, Farm Town and competition.

Lessons I have Learned from Games - Part 1

by Wendy Byford
There are two games I play when I am not working, reading, or listening to the airline hostess tell me that I am sitting in the emergency row. While they started as a way to entertain myself when I was too tired to work – late night flights from here to there come to mind – I grew to respect the lessons I learned from playing them.

The first game is called Jewel Quest II. It sits on my cell phone. For all of you from the IRS, it doesn’t cost me any minutes. The objective of the game is to line up 3 pieces in a row so their game squares turn to gold. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to play; which is good, because, as I recall, I didn’t take that class. The lesson this game taught me is easy to describe but took quite awhile to sink in – Let Go. Now for all of you who are spiritually minded, you probably got this lesson a long time ago. I applaud you. However, in my case, the Universe decided I needed remedial training. In my mind’s eye I can see my mentors, Bob Proctor and John Assaraf, cringing in the background. “We thought you had this one nailed.” Well, apparently not. So the Universe chose a unique way of showing me.

When I first started playing Jewel, I would try to hang onto positions so I could maneuver the pieces into just the right configuration. Of course – yes, I can hear all of you game players laughing into your PCs – the board had other ideas. Determined not to be out-strategized by a piece of electronics, I tried harder. The positions, points and time slipped away. Finally one day, in absolute frustration, I just let a position go and all the game pieces fell neatly into place – better than my original strategy. Huh. I tried it again, and again it worked. Now I am not saying I do not have to play the game; but the lesson I learned is that after I have done the best I can to line things up, I have to let the positions go and see what happens. Most of the time the outcome is in my favor. The Universe is on my side.

So how do I translate this lesson into everyday living? After all, running a business or two is not a game. Or is it? What I learned is to do the best I can with each strategy, each project, and then let go to see what happens. The results can be amazing. When things appear not to go my way, I ask the best question I know – What’s the lesson here? I always get an answer, and it is usually that a better configuration is right around the corner. So get ready.

Where do your lessons come from? In Part 2 I’ll talk about Farm Town.

How to GROW your Business

Were you on our amazing and gratis webinar the other night with Dr. Anil Agarwal? We told you he would shift your thinking. We’ve been getting nothing but emails today telling us what a job he did in rearranging brains and showing businesses ways they can succeed.

We've uploaded the webinar and you can watch it here. Scroll down and click on his picture to launch the video.

Enjoy.