If Life Is a Game, These Are the Rules Book Summary

In your day-to-day successes and struggles, have you ever felt like life is a game, but you are unsure of the rules to apply? In the book “If Life is a Game, These Are the Rules,” Cherie Carter-Scott offers ten rules that assist individuals in conquering any challenge, managing life-related ups and downs, and becoming well-balanced and contented. Drawing from his experiences as a motivational speaker and a coach, Carter-Scott argues that these rules can assist in playing the game of life meaningfully and effectively. These rules are not to be followed strictly but work as universal values since we are all unique individuals and hence require different approaches to life.  

The 10 Rules of Life

Rule 1: You will receive a body.

When we enter this world, we receive a body that houses our spiritual essence. The body stores our dreams, aspirations, fears, hopes, expectations, and thoughts that make us unique. Suzy Prudden once said, “Your body is your vehicle for life. As long as you are here, live in it. Love, honor, respect and cherish it, treat it well, and it will serve you in kind”. Since our body houses us for our time on earth, we should learn to love and accept it, and we will have an easier time on earth and vice versa. Regardless of how our body features look like, we should view ourselves as being worthy. In addition, respecting our bodies and supporting them to take us through life invokes the learning required for optimum performance.

How can I respect and love a body that I don’t like? According to Carter-Scott, it does not matter how you feel about your body, for example, healthier, thinner, attractive, or unattractive; it is yours, and your relationship with it has much to do with how you will enjoy life. The challenge presented by rule one is to make peace with your body so that it can efficiently serve its purpose and share valuable lessons that will take you to higher heights.   

Rule 2: You will be presented with lessons.

The day you were born, you enrolled in a full-time informal school known as life. Daily, you will be presented with an opportunity to learn a lesson. You may hate such lessons or like them; just know that they are part of the curriculum. Also, it is crucial to note that we have unique paths, and the lessons we encounter are specific to us. Learning such lessons is vital for discovering and fulfilling the meaning as well as the relevance of our lives.

Apart from the lessons the body teaches, are there more from other sources? Yes. According to Carter-Scott, once you get the lessons the body teaches, the next step involves embracing additional ones from an advanced teacher known as the universe. For the universe, lessons will be all around. When you feel pain, there is a lesson; when you feel joy, there is another.   

In working through rule two, the main challenge is to align ourselves with our unique paths through learning individual lessons. Never compare your path to another’s because they are different, but always trust that your circumstances are leading you on the right path.

Rule 3: There are no mistakes, only lessons.

Personal growth is a process of experimentation in which we face trials, errors, and victories. When projects we have heavily invested in fail, we are likely to experience disappointment and anger in response to the time, energy, and money spent. While it is easy to jump into self-judgment and feel bad, such behavior impedes our progress. How about viewing the mistakes as opportunities to learn? From the book, the failed experiments are as valuable as those where we excel. 

If we successfully consider our life-related hardships, hurts, losses, and tragedies, among others, as life lessons and shift our perception to see them as opportunities, we will get empowered.

The author urges readers to view their mistakes as opportunities for learning. When dealing with mistakes, we should:

• Be compassionate with ourselves
• Learn to forgive
• Live ethically
• Maintain a sense of humor 

Rule 4: A Lesson is repeated until learned.

In life, have you ever noticed that lessons tend to repeat themselves? This rule shows that one can only continue to the next lesson after learning the current one. The main challenge for rule four is identifying and releasing patterns that tend to repeat themselves. This is no easy task when effecting change since change is never easy.

The author presented six essential steps for executing any change in life. They include;

• Awareness – Becoming conscious about personal patterns or issues
• Acknowledgment – Admitting you are required to release the pattern
• Choice – Actively selecting to release the pattern
• Strategy – Developing a realistic plan
• Commitment – Taking actions supported by external accountability
• Celebration – Rewarding yourself after registering success.

Rule 5: Learning does not end.

Have you ever noticed that another challenge immediately emerges after you grasp a lesson? Just as you have learned to set aside free time and engage in self-care, you are given increased responsibilities at work. As long as we are alive, we will never finish learning lessons regardless of age and success level. As our wisdom increases daily, our capabilities expand, allowing us to more easily resolve issues. Rule five challenges us to embrace the reality of being a perpetual student of life and conceding to the idea that you do not know everything you need to and never will. 

To rise to the challenge of embracing the role of a perpetual student, we should learn the lessons of surrender, humility, commitment, and flexibility. Without such lessons, we may never effectively open our minds, hearts, and spirits wide, allowing ourselves to take in all that life teaches us. 

Rule 6: “There” is no better than “Here.”

Many people believe that the grass is greener on the other side. However, when you arrive “there,” you will realize you are still dissatisfied. By always pursuing the “there,” you will never appreciate the “here.” Have you encountered people who state, “I will be happier when I get married and after I graduate”? What happens once they graduate and get married? In most cases, they still feel dissatisfied.

We will never enjoy being present if we live in a continuous cycle of longing. Living through such a cycle can be devastating. The main challenge presented by this rule is to live and enjoy the present. If we focus on the present, life will be peaceful.

Rule 7: Others are only mirrors of you.

How you react to others says much more about you than about the others. According to Carter-Scott, you cannot love or hate something about another person unless it reflects something you love or hate about yourself. We love people who have traits that we like and dislike people who have traits we dislike.

Lessons an individual can learn from rule seven include clarity, tolerance, support, and healing. As we continue learning such lessons, we take specific steps toward shifting our perspective from others to ourselves. We should learn to embrace all parts of others, know that our judgment about others says much about us, take time to nurture ourselves toward wholeness, and be supportive of others and ourselves.

Rule 8: What you make of your life is up to you.

In this life, we have all the tools we need to succeed. What we do with them is up to us. According to Carter-Scott, every individual can create their reality. In this case, your life authorship is your absolute right; you can script it as you desire.

The main challenge rule eight presents is creating and owning our realities. Various lessons linked to rule eight that will lead you to the life you are meant to live include release, courage, power, responsibility, and adventure. How can we create our own reality? According to Carter-Scott, we should:

• Take responsibility  for ourselves and build a life we are proud of
• Release every circumstance that holds us back from creating our reality
• Be courageous to create the life we desire
• Learn to call upon our power (s)
• Be adventurous as we pursue life

Rule 9: Your answers lie inside of you.

All the answers we have been looking for in this life lie within our grasp, and all we need is to look inside, listen, and trust ourselves. There are no outside sources of wisdom that offer answers to the innermost questions; you are your wisest teacher. In your heart, you know what you already need to know.

Our spiritual DNA resides in us and transmits messages linked to our life path. Such messages are signals or directives from the inner source of intuition that guides us towards and through an authentic life.

Listening carefully lets us tune into the frequency that transmits this valuable information. The main challenge of rule nine is to tune in and honor the messages and answers we receive from the spiritual blueprint. How can we tune in and honor the messages and answers from the spiritual blueprint? Through:

• Listening to ourselves
• Trusting ourselves
• Being inspired – Have an inspiration box

Rule 10: You will forget all of this at birth.

We came to this world with all the information concerning the ten rules. However, we simply forgot some rules along the way. We should continually remind ourselves about the truth, again and again, and develop ways in which we can find our way back to what we had forgotten. How can we succeed in this? By:

• Having faith
• Embracing the lessons of wisdom
• Never accept limitations since there are no boundaries to what we can become or do

The central truth in this rule is to remember our truth (s) repeatedly and find ways to return to what we have forgotten. Such is done through learning the advanced lesson of faith, wisdom, and limitlessness. Mastering such takes us into a deeper level of consciousness and a higher realm of spiritual expansion.