Last Sunday we had friends from Liverpool round for the day.
My wife Alex’s best friend from Uni (and for the last 20 years) and her family.
Their kids are the same ages as ours and we always have a great time when we get together.
At one point their middle child asked “Do you have Monopoly?”
“Do we have Monopoly?” I replied.
“We’ve got about 7 different versions”.
Conventional, Manchester, Ultimate Banking, Voice Banking, Speed, Travel and Deal off the top of my head, but there might be others.
We settled on a game of Ultimate Banking.
Which I won 🙂
Notorious by it’s absence in that version of Monopoly is the ‘Get out of jail free card’.
Which I never really liked.
Nor the option to pay to get out.
I always felt it should be a miss a turn (or more) situation – a bit like actual jail.
I appreciate it’s only a game, but I’m not sure that paying money to avoid the consequences of your actions is the right message to teach kids.
Or that you can sometimes just get away with them for no real reason.
Actions have consequences.
Our choices and behaviours lead to things happening downstream.
There is no “get out of jail” free card in real life.
If we eat way more than we need to, then there are consequences down the line.
We either have to have less than we need to the same degree in the future……….
Or we gain weight.
No way around it.
We don’t get enough sleep and we’ll be tired.
We don’t get enough nourishment in our eating, we’ll feel worse.
We drink too much caffeine (guilty) and we’ll not feel great.
And so on.
It’s tempting to wish there was the equivalent of ‘get out of jail free’ card.
To think “I should be able to ……..”
Or “It’s not fair that………..”
But that’s just a road to frustration and disappointment.
In life there are consequences.
We do something, something else happens.
Remembering that is a powerful way to help us make better decisions in the first place.
Much love,
Jon ‘I’ve just realised that I’ve written a completely different blog to what I had intended to here. I’ll come to my original point tomorrow’ Hall
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RISE in Macclesfield was established in 2012 and specialise in Group Personal Training weight loss programmes for those that don’t like the gym and find diets boring and restrictive!
