Can lightning strike the same spot twice?
How about three times?
How about 360 times in one year?

The same spot in the Tiwi Islands is struck by lightning almost every day by a dark cloud called Thunderstorm Hector.  Its lightning is seen for 60 miles in all directions and is caused by the unique conditions of that area of the Pacific Ocean.

Once you learn about this special cloud, your mind is opened to new possibilities.  Maybe what I thought was true about lightning is not so.

Wouldn’t it be great if we could stimulate the same kind of rethinking when it comes to our emotional storms?

Fortunately, we can with a strategy we call the possibilities game.

What is the possibilities game?

The possibilities game involves noticing we’ve given an event a negative interpretation and then making a game of finding alternative meanings. You can give yourself a point for each new meaning you create. The power of this approach is that it relieves our upsets in a fun way.

The steps of the possibilities game are:

  1. Notice the meaning you’ve given an even you don’t feel good about.
  2. Create several alternative meanings.
  3. Give yourself a point for each new alternative.
  4. Notice that the original interpretation was in the mind, not in the events.

Here’s how Jessie, one student of the Lefkoe Occurring Course, used the technique

She was at a dinner party and a woman kept interrupting her. She was feeling quite annoyed. The meanings she gave the woman’s behavior was “She’s rude. There’s something wrong with her.”

When she played the possibilities game she created the following alternative meanings:

  • She could be extremely insecure.
  • She might have some weird judgment about me that is making her talk over me.
  • Maybe she is competitive and has to ‘win’ at everything – even a conversation with a stranger.
  • Jet lag might be making her loopy.
  • She could be unaware of her actions.
  • I can never know what all this energetic bossiness is coming from.

She got six points for coming up with six interpretations. She then noticed the interpretation she gave originally was not in the events but in her mind. As a result, her annoyed feelings dissipated.

One mistake people can make with this game is to try too hard to come up with “good” alternative meanings

You do best when you treat this as brainstorming and go for quantity. Give yourself a point no matter how “good” or useful the possibilities you generate seem to be. If you do, you’ll find that you’ll create enough to help you notice the meaning was in the mind and not in the events.

Summary

The possibilities game involves generating many alternative meanings for an upsetting event and giving yourself a point for each alternative you create. Then you notice that the events don’t have an intrinsic interpretation. Finally, this strategy works best by focusing on quantity over quality.

Play the possibilities game daily for fun. If you do, you’ll find that the outer storms of life still show up from time to time but you can better face them with an inner calm.