Playing the Game of Life as an Empowered Woman requires some objectives, to begin with. In this episode, we take the rough outline of the Playbook. The objective for playing the game of life is defined here.

Practicing Peace

My recommendation for exploring a peace practice this week is to end your shower with a cold shower.  Start with 5 seconds and add 5-second increments each day until you get to 2.5 minutes. Let me know how it goes for you!

Okay, moving on to the much-anticipated Playbook practice. 

Loose Definition of Playbook

The Playbook is loosely defined as a new perspective and guide on playing the game of life for the Everyday Heroine.

In life, there are plenty of challenges that each of us is meant to overcome and life is not always going to feel like a game. I strongly believe that life is meant to be enjoyed. The Playbook should address how to navigate the challenges of life in a way that eventually or ultimately creates more joy and happiness for everyone. Consider it a playbook for achieving life, liberty, and your pursuit of happiness. 

If I stay a moment on that last phrase… life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. I think I can touch on the most important aspect behind my intentions with this playbook.

Happiness

Happiness may be the easiest one to agree upon in this way. Each person has a unique perspective on what makes them happy. It is very personal and specific to each person. I love it because it inspires a very rich and colorful way to live life. It can bring out the beauty in humanity. We can see how the products and services we use and consume are designed to allow for a unique experience for self-expression. With different colors, shapes, and sizes we feel like we can get exactly what we want to make us feel like true individuals. 

I hope we can also all agree that the hatefulness we see in the world is a result of unhappiness. So, I like to explore unhappiness just as much as I like to explore happiness. In the human world, both extremes exist as part of the full adventure of being a human. Using the Playbook as a guide, I must entertain all aspects of happiness. 

Liberty

Now when we take a similar approach to life and liberty, we can open a conversation that is free to explore the extremes. Liberty, also known as freedom and independence has a sliding scale where one side opposes the other. 

This week I am seeing news that Britney Spears is free from her conservatorship. This has been a fascinating story to understand and watch. It may be the single best-case current event to study so that we can gain perspective on what it means to live a life of liberty. It is long and complicated. Britney’s story combines all three – life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness all into one. 

Britney could probably tell us what it is like to be living in an extreme without the normal liberties human beings can take for granted, especially Americans. We will get into this more later. For now, you may have some areas of your life where you feel limited or excluded from something you want. Or maybe it shows up for you through a lack of confidence or a lack of courage to do whatever you wish. 

With all that, you can start to see how important it is to have a Playbook that benefits a woman desiring to live a life of liberty.

Life

I will quickly add the life part by talking about life in this way. On one side, life is fulfilling, enjoyable, satisfying, purposeful, and you are engaged with life in a way that you live full out. On the other side, you are disengaging with life and you shy away from living full out. You may be frustrated, angry, stuck, stressed, and overwhelmed. You may have symptoms like anxiety, depression, and at the real extremes, you may not want to live life. 

Somewhere in the middle, there is a big difference between taking time to replenish and rejuvenate so that you can live full out, which is part of living full out. And living out of balance and forcing your way with unhealthy habits, behaviors, unawareness, or being the subject of too much abuse. This can force you into retreat or downtime due to imbalance and illness.

Another recent current event that highlights the extremes of what it means to live life full out is the story of Simone Biles. Her story challenges us to break down cultural messages and influences that can swing a perspective between heroine and villain by demonizing the idea of quitting on the pursuit of excellence even when it compromises mental health. 

Are we a collective of humans (also known as humanity) that chooses to spend a portion of our lives or our energy… hurting other humans? I get so curious about people and life and what it is like to be a human and witness what is going on in our world. 

It fascinates me! It certainly makes me wonder, what are we doing with our lives?

This is something a real Playbook must address. What is the difference between living life full out to achieve some sort of outcome or excellence where mental health can pivot between optimal and detrimental? What can and should we do about it? As humans, we can be genuinely fragile and sincerely powerful. The balance between being at our best and being at our worst should not be left to chance. It no longer needs to be. Not in 2021! We are pretty smart humans, generally speaking. The balance between surviving and thriving is something we know a little bit about. We can send regular everyday humans into space and bring them back safely. As humans, we can learn more and thrive more, so the Playbook is a place to start the conversation so that everyone benefits. 

Empowerment through Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness

From my perspective, I see the Playbook as a way to educate and inspire women to live a life of empowerment. It is a topic I am passionate about, and it is my mission in life not only to live a more empowered life myself but also to help others do the same.

The Playbook is turning into a practice of gaining perspective on life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness as we play the game of life like an Everyday Heroine.

Special shoutout to Thomas Jefferson for the ‘life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness’ quote!

An Everyday Heroine is synonymous with an empowered woman.

That is a juicy conversation! Albeit one-sided, so always know that I love to hear your feedback! 

I’ll say one more thing as I invite the feedback. 

I posted on social media this week about the difference between empowering and disempowering leadership. All are welcome here!

Most humans exhibit a bit of both styles. I encourage you to be more curious than judgmental that is the path to empowerment. 

I paint a picture between the two with several phrases to help you distinguish between the leadership styles:

Disempowering Leadership:

 seeks to attack
 manages or controls
 delegates fully
 works in crisis mode
 uses left-brain analysis
 deals with problems
 takes advantage of others
 


 Empowering Leadership:


 seeks to understand
 leads by example
 participates in responsibilities
 shares information
 considers feedback from others
 plans ahead and holds others accountable
 uses whole-brain thinking
 sees only opportunities
 sees the true human resource

Okay, so we have a general description of the Playbook. We brought a bit of clarity to the description with some examples and definitions or guidelines. We hinted at the difference between empowering and disempowering leadership styles. Now we are ready to get into the Playbook objective. 

First, let me remind you of the outline I started previously. 

7 Facets to the Playbook Guidelines:

1.0     The Objective of the Game

2.0     The Playing Field

3.0     Skills, Talents, and Essence

4.0     Connection, Inspiration, and Support 

5.0     Playing the Game 

6.0     Improper play, Illegal action, and misconduct

7.0     Outside the Playing Field

As you may know, I am generally following the Major League Baseball rule book as I create this Playbook. And it may surprise you that the objective of the game of baseball is described in 6 sentences. 

With these objectives, you gain perspective and appreciation of the game known as America’s National Pastime.

As I bring this episode to a close, I’ll share the 6 sentences that make up the objective for this Playbook and Playing the Game of Life – like an Everyday Heroine.

The Objective of Playing the Game of Life

  1. The Game of Life is a game played by a human living in a physical world between birth and until death, under the direction of that human being, and in accordance with the rules of nature. 
  2. The human has cycles of sleep and wake stages that are a normal part of surviving and thriving, under the hierarchy of Maslow’s needs. 
  3. During the sleep stage, the human enters a state that provides rest and replenishment that supports advancement for the human’s existence during the wake stage. 
  4. During wake stages the human enters a realm with a variety of options for existence that ultimately facilitate growth and advancement. 
  5. The objective of the human is to progress through the hierarchy of Maslow’s needs based on the human conditions available in the physical world at the time of existence. 
  6. The quality of life is solely judged by its creator and there is no such thing as losing.

That starts the creation of the Playbook. There will be so much more to come in next week’s episode and beyond.

For life coaching with Maria Kauffman check out our products and services here.

To schedule an empowerment session with Maria, go here!

For now, enjoy your adventures and journey responsibly!

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