The Game

[Guest guest]

From the 90-Day Blessing Experiment:

Kate Nowak wrote:

In the early thirties, during the Great Depression, an out-of-work

salesman named Darrow found money in short supply, jobs

non-existent and his family in need. Like countless others, Darrow had

every reason to be worried and no one would have blamed him.

But realizing that worry helped nothing, and his wife, Ester,

resisted the urge and, instead, spent the hours re-inventing a

modestly popular folk game that had been around for 30 years or more.

The game, which allowed players to rent properties, pay taxes and

utilities and do their best to avoid going to " jail " and/or the

" poorhouse " was called Landlord.

Landlord had already been reinvented a dozen or more times by various

individuals, and a few had even marketed it with marginable success.

But in early 1934, a friend showed Darrow a version of the game that

reflected a favorite resort location of the time. It was rather

lackluster in appearance and focused primarily on the greed of

marketplace monopolizers. In that version, as well as its

predecessors, players actually had to be the " bad " guy to win.

Darrow decided to revamp it completely, creating a more colorful game

board with game pieces based on items found in his own home, a square

playing surface instead of a circular one and streets and properties

that were color-coded to correspond with the board. The " poorhouse "

was done away with completely, and the rules rewritten to focus more

on financial strategy than greed. In short, he made the game more fun

to play.

Together, while economic depression raged all around them, and

Ester spent countless happy hours playing and refining the game,

becoming mental millionaires over and over again as they bought, sold

and rented property in this miniaturized version of Atlantic City, the

resort area where, in more prosperous times the couple had spent many

enjoyable days.

They renamed the newly revamped game Monopoly and after perfecting the

rules, invited close friends and neighbors to play their new version

along with them. Those friends clamored to buy their own copies of the

game and encouraged the couple to market this newest version.

Based on this encouragement, Darrow soon found himself

demonstrating Monopoly in the stores of Philadelphia where people by

the hundreds stood in line to buy it. When orders for the 1934

Christmas season were so great the couple could not possibly fill

them, Darrow then sought out Brothers, and sold rights to the

game in exchange for royalties. Within a year, the Darrows were

millionaires. All because in a time when life seemed dismal and

doomed, and Ester Darrow opted to play with possibility.

Whether you have an immediate need for money, a health concern, or are

dealing a relationship gone awry, no matter what the difficulty may

be, it will not be solved by your worry. In fact, the more you worry,

the farther you will remove yourself from the solution you seek.

So today, no matter what your problems might be, I urge you to follow

Darrow's lead and play with possibility instead. Add a splash of color

to whatever bleak thoughts you're entertaining, change the shape of

your current mindset, and start strategizing with the playful side of

your nature. Look for a more joyful way to approach life, and you'll

soon find life to be more enjoyable.

Life, after all, is a wonderful game of infinite potentiality. Why not

play it that way?

From Eckhart Tolle: " No solution ever came at the frequency level of

the problem.The answer to the problem is at the frequency level of the

solution. "