10. If Life is a Game, These Are the Rules

Hi, I’m Natalie Ottosen and you’re listening to The Mindset School for Soulful Entrepreneurs episode number 10.

Welcome to The Mindset School podcast, a show for spiritual entrepreneurs who are ready to stop feeling stuck, reconnect to their soul’s purpose, and create a deeply fulfilling life and business. I’m Natalie Ottosen, transformational life coach, and reconnection healing foundational practitioner, and I can help you scale and grow a six-figure business from a place of inner authority, wisdom, knowledge, and truth.

If you are a spiritual entrepreneur and you are looking to take that first step towards your dream of running your own business, this is the show for you. Ready to step into your power and move forward with clarity and purpose? Let’s go.

Hello, spiritual entrepreneurs. I get asked this all the time, what are some of your favorite spiritual books that got you started? So I thought it would be fun for my 10^th episode to share one of my favorite books that really helped me along my spiritual journey, and it also happens to be one of the books that I’m giving away in the podcast giveaway. So if you haven’t followed, rated, and reviewed the podcast yet, what are you waiting for? Seriously, you could possibly win one of these amazing books and any other of the amazing prizes that I’m giving away.

So anyways, the book I want to talk to you about today is called If Life is a Game, These Are the Rules by Chérie Carter-Scott. Whenever people ask me what my favorite book is or what was a game changer book for me, I always reference this book. And in fact, I’ve bought and given away so many copies of this book, it's ridiculous. This book really was a game changer for me. It was presented to me in a time of my life that I really needed to hear the words to help move me forward. It helped me build the foundation, the confidence and really the understanding to help get me to where I am here and now.

So in this book she talks about 10 rules for being a human because as you know we were not given a manual when we came to this Earth to figure out this crazy thing called life. So the first rule that she talks about in this book is you will receive a body. And we get to learn to either accept and respect or reject that body. And this one was a huge lesson for me, and it might be one for you too. I didn’t respect my body and I didn't do what my body needed. I abused my body in all different ways, specifically with food and alcohol.

I wouldn't consider myself an alcoholic, but I definitely was at the time abusing alcohol and over-drinking to numb myself out and to keep myself from feeling feelings. We call that buffering in coaching. All of this was exasperated by the trauma that I had experienced that I talked about in episode seven and eight. My self-esteem and my self-image, it was completely in the toilet.

When I read this book 20 plus years ago I didn't like my body and I had body dysmorphia disorder and I still do. When I looked in the mirror I saw a monster. In fact, the monster that I saw, I don’t know if you guys remember the movie, The Labyrinth, I don’t know if you remember the orange creatures with the long legs, with the big head sitting on top of the legs. That's what I saw in the mirror. I had major distortions when it came to my hips and my legs. I was really tall. I am really tall, still am. And I just had this completely distorted view of what I saw in the mirror.

I also believed that I needed things like plastic surgery in order to make me feel complete and whole. I ended up getting breast implants, hated them, felt like an imposter with them. And after having them for 10 years and getting severely ill with breast implant illness, I ended up having them removed five years ago. So 15 years total later, scars and all, today I can say I love my body more than I ever have. So this first lesson, it was kind of this whole process of destroying my body to realize what I had was beautiful already. There was nothing I needed to do or change to be beautiful and worthy.

And this has ended up being a repeating lesson and a theme in my life that has shown up in all areas of my life, to truly learn to love myself completely and whole. So around the same time I was also introduced to a movie called, What the Bleep. I don’t know if you guys remember that one too. Which was all about quantum physics and consciousness, and it actually ties into a lot of the framework of how I coach now, how our thoughts create our feelings. Our feelings drive our actions, and our actions ultimately create our results.

And we have repeated thoughts and those repeated thoughts become our belief systems and those belief systems ultimately shape how we view and see ourselves. So there is a part in this movie where she’s standing in front of the mirror and all of the negative thoughts she thinks about herself ended up showing up on her skin all over her body. And I don't remember a ton about the movie, but I do remember thinking, that would have been me covered in all of those words. All of those words that she was saying about herself, that is how I felt about myself.

So later in the movie there is a scene where she is practicing self-love and she takes this pen and she's literally writing the words that she wants to think about herself, these love notes so to speak. She was writing them all over her body, all over her skin and she was covered in them. And then she ended up taking lotion. There was this part in there where she had lotion and she was putting lotion on her legs and her arms, and her body and she was genuinely speaking these loving, kind, and thoughtful words to herself and her body.

And that ended up being a really important exercise that I ended up doing myself as I learned to love and accept this beautiful body that I have been given. So if you're struggling with negative self-talk this could be a beautiful exercise for you to try as well. So rule number one, we’re given a body and we get to accept, respect, or reject. It is our vessel in this life that is housing our soul and we get to love it and work with it or against it. And I believe the reason why this is number one is because it all starts with loving us first.

Once we’re able to heal and build the relationship with self, everything else falls in place. In fact when I'm working with a client who is struggling with self-worth and loving their own body we always work on making it neutral. I have a body. You don't have to have to love it yet. And in fact, you can't go from hating to loving your body, but you can 100% believe that you do in fact have a body and we just start building from there.

So that’s lesson number one and in my opinion it's a big one because as we’re able to learn and deepen into loving and accepting ourselves, we can deepen into loving and accepting others on a whole new level.

Lesson number two is you will be presented with lessons. This one was really powerful to me. We are given lessons and then we are here to learn from those lessons, almost like we’re in school and instead of graduating from one grade to the next, we’re graduating to the next lesson or experience. So I love what she says in her book. She says the challenge of rule number two is to align yourself with your own unique path by learning individual lessons. She says individual lessons, we are here to learn not what somebody else is here to learn or what you think somebody else should learn, it's all about you.

And it's such a beautiful reminder to not compare your journey to what other people are going through or somebody else's journey. And to approach it with this beginner's mind, meaning how can you stay open and receiving and curious as you go through this process of learning these lessons of what's available to you in that lesson? So if you find yourself asking the question, why is this happening to me, I want to offer instead, what can I learn from this experience or what is this experience trying to teach me?

Number three is there is no mistakes, just lessons. I love this. She says growth is a process of experimentation, a series of trials, errors, and occasional victories. The failed experiments are as much a part of the process as the experiments that work. What I love the most about this is that it almost gives me, I don’t know if it does for you, this permission of the ‘mistakes’ that I've made, they’re just all part of my growth process. And it almost gives me a sigh of relief to know that it's just part of the process. So what we perceive as failures are all part of the beautiful lessons.

We are here to learn, and I think I mentioned this in either episode seven or eight, as hard as some of these lessons were for me to go through, to learn, to experience, they have absolutely shaped every part of who I am today, just as these lessons and experiences are shaping who you are or have shaped who you are. And I don't know about you, but I am proud of that person, and I hope that you can say the same. And if that might be a struggle for you, I want you to ask, how can you embrace your past and have compassion for your own journey?

I love this. She says, “Compassion is the emotional glue that keeps us rooted in the universality of the human experience, as it connects you to your essence into the essence of those around you.” So good, so good. So to me this is the kind of concept where what's meant for you will always be meant for you. There is no mistake in the lessons that you’ve been given. And these lessons are here to help you expand your soul and to take you where it is that you need to be. It also puts you in spiritual alignment, just like I talked about in episode eight, especially when you’re building a spiritual business.

I believe, I truly believe that everything that I have been through is so that I can help my clients through the exact same thing in their own life. And it's because of these experiences that I have gone through that I am able to help other women through the exact same thing.

Lesson number four is lessons are repeated until they’re learned. So she says in her book, “To face these challenges means you need to accept the fact that something within you keeps drawing you to the same kind of person or issue. And the challenge is to identify and release the patterns that you are repeating.” And then she says, “As any good facilitator or therapist will tell you, this is not an easy task since it means that you have to change, and change is not always easy.”

She also says, “Staying just as you are may not help you advance spiritually but it certainly is comfortable and it’s familiar.” I think we probably all have somebody in our lives, and it could even be us, who has repeated experiences over and over and over again. In fact you may even say to yourself, “When are they going to learn their lesson”, just like my dad said to me, “When is she going to learn her lesson.” And some of us know people where maybe it didn't turn out so well. Because of these lessons that we’re here to learn, they get to be repeated until we do learn from them.

And when we don't learn from them, these lessons, they come bigger and louder until they finally get our attention one way or another. So this actually shows up a lot in astrology. One of my favorite things to do with my clients and talk about, if you’re ever sitting in a room with me, I love to talk about astrology. Because we have our Saturns, and Saturn is our life lesson. And every seven years we kind of get a check-in on those life lessons. And then we have a really big coming around or knock on the door when we turn about 28 to 30 and then 58 to 60 where those life lessons, they really kind of come screaming at us.

And if we’re not paying attention and we’re not doing what we need to do, it can really lead to painful points in our lives and painful lessons for us. So again, these lessons, we can either learn from them or we can repeat them.

Lesson number five is learning does not end. So she says, “The challenge to rule number five is to embrace your role as a perpetual student of this life.” She also says, “That it may come as a relief to finally understand that you never actually master life and that striving to do so will only lead to frustration. The best you can do is strive to master the process by which you experience it.” For me, this took me on the journey of surrender, non-attachment, acceptance, humility and even having to be flexible.

She talks about several of these in the book and they’re beautiful topics to kind of dive into, but the learning it never ends, and we are this perpetual student in life.

Lesson number six, there is not better than here. She says, “Many people believe that they will be happy once they arrive at some specific goal they set for themselves. When you're there has become your here, you will simply attain a there that will look better than your present here.” I love this and this has shown up in so many different ways by so many different teachers for me. And I believe that gratitude is one of those ways that we can truly embrace our here. If we aren’t practicing gratitude and we aren’t looking at the things that we have right in front of us, we’re always looking to grab the next thing.

And when we’re grateful for what we have and what we have is enough, number one, you’ll end up having more, but number two, if you concentrate on what you don't have you will never ever, ever have enough. So we have to really learn to love and embrace where we are right here right now even if it's not exactly where we think that we want to be.

Lesson number seven is, others are only mirrors of you. I am sure many of you have heard this before. And actually I remember my therapist back in the day said, “The things that irritate us about others lead us to a greater understanding about ourselves.” In fact, that was my motto for a really long time, and I put it on my fridge so that I could see it every single day. What I found was, being irritated by other people is where I had the work to do on myself. And on the flipside, the light and the joy and the brilliance and the magnificence that we see in other people, that also exists inside of us or else you wouldn’t be able to see it and recognize it.

So others are that mirror for us and recognizing this can create so much clarity and healing. She says, “Clarity is the state of seeing clearly. You achieve clarity in those moments of startling insight when you're able to shift your perspective by viewing a situation in a new light.” I like to think of clarity as the result of applying Windex to your soul. As you begin to view others as mirrors of yourself it is as if you move into a new reality in which you experience life with astonishing crystal vision. So beautiful, I love that so much.

Lesson number eight, what you make of your life is up to you. I've said this before, and I will say it again. No one is coming to save you, you are here to save yourself. And I think it's Dolores Cannon who says that, “You are the producer, the director, the actor and the writer of your own drama.” You are responsible for the life that you want to create. And I love it because she says in her book, “When you begin to live your life, understanding that what you make of it is up to you, you are able to design it according to your authentic choices and desires.”

And you get to decide how you're going to show up and who you're going to be in this life. So I think that’s so beautiful. I think that puts incredible responsibility back on ourselves, back onto our choices, the choices that we make or do not make and how we want to show up in our everyday life.

Lesson number nine, your answers lie inside of you. She says, “All of the answers you are looking for are already within your grasp. All you need to do is look inside, listen, and trust yourself. There is no outside source of wisdom that can give you the answer to any of your innermost questions. You alone are your wisest teacher. Deep inside you already know all you need to know.” I believe this with every fiber of my being. And it is one of the foundational principles as a coach for me. I truly believe that you have all of the answers inside of you.

I believe that you have been given an intuition and a guidance system, that all the information you need is inside of you. The brilliance with having a coach is that sometimes a coach can ask you the right questions and help bring that clarity forward for you, especially when you might be struggling because you have a human brain that’s going to offer you all sorts of drama and problems because that’s what the brain does. So having a coach who believes, first of all, that you have the answers inside or you is going to help guide you to your own inner wisdom, which is exactly what I help my clients do.

Lesson number 10, you will forget all of this at birth. So she says, “The challenge of rule number 10 is to remember your truth again and again and to create ways to find your way back when you forget. You do this by learning the advanced lessons of faith and wisdom and ultimately, limitlessness. Mastering these takes you to a deeper level of consciousness and a far greater realm of spiritual expansion. “So when you came to this planet your memories were wiped clean.

And depending on what you believe, if you believe that we came here and it's one and done or if you were raised in more of a Buddhist culture where you believe that we've reincarnated. We still forget why we came here. And I believe a big part of the process is remembering that you have all of the divinity and brilliance and wisdom and inner knowledge inside of you. And sometimes we get those inklings, those moments of ahas and familiarity and maybe even déjà vu. But I do believe that we’re here to remember all of this brilliance inside of us.

We want to take all of this and encompass it in a way that brings your purpose and your passion forward so that you can create a life and a business that you ultimately desire. So I know I just barely scratched the surface of all of the goodness in this book. And if you can't wait to start reading it, I’ll link the book in the show notes.

So to recap this whole thing. We’re given a body. You'll be presented with lessons. There are no mistakes, only the lessons. Lessons are repeated until they’re learned. Learning does not end. There is not better than here. Others are only mirrors. What you make your life is up to you. All of the answers lie inside of you. And you will forget all of this at birth.

So I hope you enjoyed this. This has been one of my favorite books, again it really created the foundation that really expanded my spirituality and really allowed me to start diving into different things and start opening my mind to different possibilities all the way around. And it ultimately, and I’ll talk about this later when I talk about another book that was one of my favorites, it ended up helping me see that this was something really small and just expanded from there.

So I would love to know your thoughts if you read this book. It’s a really quick, short read and just a magnificent book. It’s, like I said, it’s been one of my favorites so I would love to know what you think about it if you end up reading it. And I will see you next week. All my love.

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Thank you for joining me for this week's episode of The Mindset School. Ready to dive deeper into finding your purpose and create a deeply fulfilling life? Visit soulsistercoaching.com for more guidance and resources. See you next week.