Snakes and Ladders Life: Navigating Life’s Ups and Downs

When I was a kid, I used to play a board game called Snakes And Ladders. You might remember it yourself. In America, it’s called Chutes And Ladders, but over here it’s called Snakes And Ladders. The concept of the game was that it had 100 squares and each player picked a token to represent where they were on the board game. Each person takes a turn rolling the dice. They move forward on the board by the number they roll, from one to a hundred.

Ladders are also on the board. When you land on the bottom of a ladder, you move up to a higher number, getting closer to 100 and winning. Now, it is a great game, I loved and enjoyed playing it and it can be exciting when it’s played with multiple players. I use the analogy of Snakes and Ladders to represent life. Just like the game, life has its ups and downs.

What is the Snakes and Ladders Life?

We are born, which can be represented by starting at square one. We’re given a body or a persona to live in, which is the token we use on the board game. We move forward year by year to get to the ripe old age of a hundred or until we reach the success that we desire. Success means different things to different people. Ultimately, it’s typically what we go through in life to achieve. Is to aim towards that either the ripe old age or to reach the level of success that we want to get to.

However, during our life, we encounter snakes. These manifest as fears, addictions, or depression. They can also arise from events like illness, the death of a loved one, or a marriage breakdown. Perhaps losing a job, our home, or financial loss. Some ladders help us advance in life, like job promotions or a growing business. We may also meet a new partner and need to build a relationship. We gain a new client or receive a clear diagnosis for an illness. Maybe we win the lottery or get a lucky break in life.

Life’s Snakes: Challenges and Setbacks

Some are big and some are small. And life is just full of these snakes and ladders for one better word. And like on the board game, in life not only does it feel we move forward and backward, but there are also times we feel we’re going around in circles. We find ourselves in a pattern of taking three steps forward and then two steps back. It’s like a never-ending Ferris wheel. We keep going around, like a treadmill, and life feels stuck in circles.

But then there are times when we get closer to our success, the level that we want and we’re just on the tip of it, and we can taste it. It’s so close and what happens is that more and more snakes start to appear. Everywhere we turn there is just a snake there ready to pull us back. And we’re on the brink of success and we’re nearly there, but we just get knocked back consistently. And some people give up in life and throw the board game off the table. Others keep going, getting back on the board each time. They hope to eventually pass the obstacles and reach the success they desire.

Life’s Ladders: Opportunities and Growth

Life is like this. Life is like that Snakes And Ladders board game. But life is also like the infinity symbol that shows up as the constant ebb and flow. And the more we get into the ebb and flow of life, the easier it becomes to reach where we’re heading. We get into the flow.

The Role of Helpers and Energy Vampires in Your Journey

But also on the Snakes And Ladders Life board game, there are other players. They are the people who hold us back or are regularly negative around us. They bring us down. These are the people I refer to typically as the energy vampires. They pull our energy down. And suck every single ounce of energy out of us. They are the people that it’s not nice to be around, we don’t typically enjoy their company.

We respect them, so when they advise us not to do something, we listen. Because of this respect, we avoid doing things we might otherwise love to do. We end up not following our dreams. We end up not following our inner desire because we’ve taken on board the advice or the guidance of these people are again what I refer to as energy vampires.

There are also helpers on the Snakes and Ladders Life board game. These are the people who support us, want the best for us, and will help in any way they can. And whatever we ask them, they are there to help us.

Some helpers may be there for a long time while other helpers may only be there for a very short period in our life. And sometimes we may not even recognise them as helpers, as at times they may push our buttons or push our triggers. We may not like what they’re saying because they’re being challenging to us, but in fact, they’re there to stretch us and to help us to grow. And the one thing with the Snakes And Ladders Life is we don’t get to see the squares that are ahead of us. We just get to see the next square that we are to take. The next step, that one thing that we’re to do the next. We don’t get to see where all the snakes are on the board game, we don’t see where all the ladders are.

Embracing the Flow: Turning Challenges into Growth

We move from one year to the next year. From one square to the next square. Literally the unknown future, we don’t perhaps know clearly where we’re heading. We have a sense of where we’re heading. We have an idea of the direction. But we can’t see all the steps ahead. If we step back from the game of life, imagine seeing the whole board laid out before you.

You could see everything that was going to happen, where all the snakes were and where all the ladders were. And you would know where you’re heading and what squares to avoid. You would see the whole thing, all the full picture in front of you, just as if you were playing the real game in real life as in the real board game. The excitement of the game comes from avoiding the snakes. At the same time, you race to reach the ladders. The goal is to win as quickly as possible. In real life, if you had that knowledge, you’d act the same. Imagine seeing your life laid out like a board game, with all the snakes and ladders marked. You’d navigate it accordingly.

You would try and avoid all the snakes, you would just move as quickly as possible to the ladders. The thing is not knowing what’s ahead of us in life is part of the excitement. In the work that I do with my clients, I get to see the most amazing images of their purpose in life and where they’re supposed to end up. Seeing pictures of my clients’ future and the impact on their lives is breathtaking. This knowledge is humbling and exciting. It’s an incredible experience every time.

Break it down

Over the years, I realized that instead of sharing the complete image, I should break it down. I need to present it in smaller chunks. When I share the full picture of what I see, people often get scared. They either say they can’t dare to try or wonder how they could ever achieve what I describe. It feels overwhelming to them. What overwhelms me is the incredible way everything fits together. Seeing how this whole Universe works is truly phenomenal. But for them it’s overwhelming and it’s a challenge.

So I’ve learned to give the picture piece by piece, much like the board game, square by square. That’s what life is like. For some, they can see it as being scary or unnerving, not knowing what lies ahead. For some, life is an adventure. They see challenges as opportunities to grow stronger and gain the tools needed for future success. These challenges help them reach their goals, make an impact, and fulfill their purpose. And I know this to be true.

I’ve learned that every challenge that shows up in our life is there for a reason, it’s there for a purpose. It’s like as if we go through life collecting all the tools we need to do the work we need to do in the future. I remember playing computer games when I was younger and to get to different levels in the game, you had to conquer different challenges. Each challenge was more difficult than the previous one. As I played the game, I collected tokens and objects to help with challenges. These items helped me progress through different levels. Ultimately, they helped me reach the highest level and win. And that’s what the Snakes And Ladders Life is like. It’s the adventure of facing challenges head-on. We see them as opportunities to achieve greater things, not obstacles.

Moving on higher

The Snakes And Ladders Life board game as I’ve described, we can understand how it affects our state of being also, how we feel about ourselves mentally and physically. You see, each time we hit the ladder it means we move up to a higher stage of being as well, a higher state of consciousness, a higher state of knowing our true selves. Equally each time we hit a snake, we move down to a lower state of being.

So, take, for example, an event that occurs in our life like our home has been threatened with repossession by the bank or we lose our job or we’ve been made redundant. This can cause us to drop to a lower state of being. This might happen over a long period or it can happen very, very quickly. That is what has happened with the COVID-19 scenario, whereby it happens so very, very fast in our lives.

Before we were in a higher state of being, we were focused on our ambitions and we were driven to go after what we wanted to. We can very quickly drop to a lower state of being, for example, we can drop to despair where we lose all purpose and all sense of meaning in life. And this can cause some of us to lower further that we’ll choose to look at a way of how we literally check out of the Snakes And Ladders Life permanently.

Sometimes we drop

You see, we move up and down these states all the time throughout our life. Some of us will be in the same state for many years. Others can move up and down different states through even a day. For example, a business owner might receive confirmation of a new client in the morning. They’ve been trying to bring this client on board for a while and just landed a large contract.

And as a result all of a sudden they’ve moved up to a higher state of being, a higher state of believing about themselves, about the business that they’re doing and what they’re doing in life. But then imagine in the afternoon that, that same business owner receives notice or a phone call or an email that they’ve just lost a major client.

All of a sudden, the good thing that happened in the morning is overshadowed by this event and they drop to a lower state and a state of despair perhaps. You see we play the Snakes And Ladders Life game all the time. If you can imagine a heart rate monitor in the hospital where you see the line going across the screen and literally it goes up and down and it beeps occasionally, but then picture the different levels on the left vertical of the screen as being the different states that we all pass through while at the bottom horizontal of the screen is time.

Small wins and big wins

The time can be measured in hours, days, weeks, months, or years. And as we go through life, that line, which is individual to each one of us moves up and down as we go through to different states. We go through life encountering these snakes and ladders and hence the reason we go up and down through these different states. Some snakes are small, others are large.

Some ladders are small and some ladders are large. They’re the small wins and the big wins. But like before, if we were allowed to stand back from the board game of life, we would see the board in its entirety. And as I said earlier on, we would be able to see where we finish. We would see all the snakes and we would see all the ladders. But now imagine that there is another Snakes And Ladders board game to the right of yours and there’s one to the left of yours.

If you were to look at it, there are similar board games surrounding all sides of your particular board game. As you zoom out of your own board game and even further, there are more and more board games surrounding each of all the other players around you, each of all the other board games. So much so that if you allowed your mind’s eye to see it, you would see all the boards continued on all sides, far into the infinite, far beyond what you can see.

We are all connected

And what you realise is that each person has their own Snakes And Ladders board game that they too are playing in life as well, their Snakes And Ladders Life. Some of those people will move onto and through your board just as much as you will also move on to other people’s boards that are around you and back onto your own board game of life.

What you realise is that we’re all connected. Every single one of us, we’re all connected. We all have this amazing interplay with each other and as they go through life and they live and they play, they are all playing their Snakes And Ladders Life game, just as much as you are as well. And that’s what we’re all working towards, moving towards, evolving towards, to this overarching objective.

Just imagine the amazement of the whole lot if you were to see it in its complete entirety because it is. You see life just like the Snakes And Ladders Life board game is supposed to be fun. Like the board game, it’s a game, it’s a fun game. It’s meant to be a fun game. It’s supposed to be a fun game. The more fun you have, the easier and the better it is to play at the Snakes And Ladders Life game.

Conclusion

So instead of chasing to get to reach the heights of our life and exiting at a 100, we should literally be having fun all along the way. And the more fun we have, then the more we obtain. That’s what the Snakes And Ladders Life is all about. So, consider where you are right now at the moment in your own Snakes And Ladders Life board game. Where does the next square lie for you? What does the next square hold for you? It’s about taking that next step. And just imagine what are the adventures that you’re going to have that are all ahead of you right now at the moment. And perhaps maybe it’s just time to roll that dice again and just see what that next square holds for you.