ON PLAYING THE GREAT GAME OF LIFE

Choosing the Rules That Truly Matter

For years, I thought I was simply building a career, climbing ladders, doing what was expected. It took me a long time to realise I was playing a game—and not one I had chosen for myself.

That’s the thing about games. The best ones are fun because you know you’re playing. But the most exhausting are the ones you don’t even realise you’re in.

I played the success game. Points came in promotions, respect, social status. On paper, I was winning. Inside, I felt restless. The scoreboard kept changing, and the finish line always moved.

I played the money game too. That one was harder to let go of. I built a business, hit the numbers, and still peace never arrived. Stepping away from it felt like losing—but in truth, it was the first real move I’d made on my own terms.

And then came the fatherhood game. Unlike the others, this one had no scoreboard, no rules to chase. Just presence. Just being there. It taught me more about meaning than all the seminars and strategy sessions combined.

It’s not just personal. We live in a culture of games. Social media is a game of comparison. Work is a game of productivity. Even wellness gets gamified—steps counted, streaks tracked, goals set like points to win. We’re so busy competing, we rarely stop to ask: Who wrote these rules? And why am I playing by them?

The tragedy isn’t that life is full of games. The tragedy is how many of us spend decades playing ones that don’t bring us alive.

The beauty is that once you see the games, you can choose differently. You can step out of the ones that exhaust you. You can write your own rules. You can decide what “winning” really means.

For me, that shift has been everything. I no longer measure my life by the success or money games. I’m playing the presence game, the meaning game, the game where the prize isn’t applause but alignment.

So perhaps the real question isn’t, Am I winning?

Maybe it’s, Am I even playing the right game?

This is the thread running through my book, The Conscious Currency, and the work I share with clients every day. Money, success, time—they’re all part of the game. But the deeper choice is how you play, and whether the rules are truly yours.