WAR, WHAT IS IT GOOD FOR?
This is not a blog about that Seinfeld episode where Jerry convinces Elaine that Tolstoi’s initial title of “War and Peace” was actually “War, What Is It Good For?” Though that episode like so many others is hysterical.
This article is about the card game of War, which is usually played by two people flipping cards and the winner taking the pair (special house rules for tiebreakers). The game’s winner, if you dare play that long, is the player with all the cards.
Who hasn’t played it? And who hasn’t enjoyed the rush of winning a tiebreaker on aces?! Or been annoyed losing to your 5 year old niece, while they giggle with every win (not me of course, but I’ve heard stories about those frustrations lol).
In our Grit course, the participants play a lot of games. (There’s a lot of reasons for this and in future blogs, we’ll explain our thoughts.) In one of the sessions, the participants will play the card game of War. I’m anticipating there will be some excitement and disappointment as they play. Truth be told, we may even try to encourage some of those responses.
In the course, we have reflections and during the reflection for that game, we will talk about “what can we control” and “what we can’t control”. During the course, we will work to manage our emotional responses, particularly when it involves something that we can’t control.
War, as an example, is a game where we have no control on the outcome. There is no skill, it is purely luck. We should have no emotion around the flipping of cards. Of course that’s not always the case - who doesn’t enjoy piling up those cards - but the lesson is, this isn’t something we can control, so we should have little to no emotion around it. This will help minimize the dip in the Grit Path (more to come on that), which will speed the Recover Ritual (and more to come on that too).
There are countless examples of things that happen that we can’t control - a ref’s bad call, a ball that takes a bad hop, a golf ball landing in a divot. We can all work to put those breaks in their proper place and moving forward. Remember, Always Keep Going Forward!
So, “War, What Is It Good For” - well, I think, learning to put those things that we can’t control in their proper place.
