Friday, February 1, 2013

Detach from the Outcome for Peaceful Conversations (and Game Nights)

Killer Queen by aussiegall, cc license
Several months ago, early on in the life of this blog and immediately following a game night with friends, Jason asked if I was going to blog about how honest and gentle I am during board games. He was being sarcastic. At the time, I had no intention of sharing with you the beast I sometimes become when playing games. It's not pretty. And it's embarrassing. I mean, in what world does it make sense to feel so intensely angry at someone for simply thwarting my next brilliant move? In the heat of the moment, I've been known to swear and to tell people that I don't like them. Sure, it's usually under a shroud of playfulness, but the kicker is that deep down I wasn't enjoying myself. Deep down, I felt stressed because I was attached to winning and they way I was going to do it, when I had relatively little actual control over that outcome.