Many of my clients have heard me say the phrase, ‘We play checkers, but God plays chess.’ I had never phrased it that way until early last year, when I made the acquaintance of a great man named O.L. Houston. O.L. and I met for a business lunch one day to discuss how he might grow his business. In talking with one another we quickly noted that his business and mine share common denominators.
One of these critical denominators is the fact that we both deal primarily with the aspects of time and timing. O.L. teaches a psychological based selling system that deals with time and timing in the flow of a sales process based on the 4 common human temperament types. I, on the other hand, deal with time and timing within the context of synchronicity and the messages we receive from God or the Universe which guide us along the path of our destiny.
It was O.L. who originally said the phrase, We play checkers, but God plays chess.’ It was a terrific consolidation of much of my life’s work. I knew it was truth the first time he said it. Like all new perspectives or methods of conveying things, I’ve meditated on this all year. This led me into the further exploration of mastering the game of chess, as I looked for clues in the game that might transfer well over into my study of synchronicity.
One of the critical things that decides a game of chess is the opening. Masterful chess champions study the openings of great games and begin to assimilate them into their own strategy.
We can take this very same approach for our game of life.
A method for doing this is:
- Know the standard position you want to reach
- Learn the main variations that lead to those standard positions
- Learn about the positional concepts that are relevant
- Learn about the common tactical motifs that arise
- Be aware of the strategic plans to carry out and study illustrative games
Now if we take the saying, ‘We play checkers but God plays chess,’ into consideration, we would then look at this method of studying openings in our own lives to determine what God is up to.
Where does God or the Universe want us to reach? What is this standard position?
You must contemplate the idea that if you were the higher intelligence, where would he/she/it want you to go from where you are right now?
You would then focus on what are the main life variations that could lead you to this standard position? In other words, if I wanted you to leave your house and go to work, what are the variable routes you could take to get there?
Now you think of the positional concepts that are relevant. In our example, ‘If you took a straight shot down the highway, would it be the quickest? Would it encounter more or less traffic? Would it cost more in gas and toll?
Next we look at common tactical motifs. Here we would look at the potential pitfalls on each route we could take. In our example, this would be traffic, police patrol, accidents, amount of gas in your tank, weather, etc.
If you begin to look at your life in this perspective you will begin to develop the other buzz phrase O.L. taught me. This is his prayer, ‘God allow me to see with your eyes and hear with your ears.’ If we start looking at our lives as if it is orchestrated from the higher intelligence and ask ourselves questions along these lines, we can begin to discern the plan that has been made for us. Once we do this, we can begin to make decisions that ‘line up’ with the plan.
Here is an exercise to help you integrate this information.
(Take some time and write down your bearing on life right now.)
1. What are you doing in your life right now?
2. What are you spending your time on? Who are you around? What are you reading? Watching?
3. If you were intended to be doing these things, how do they affect the choices you make?
4. What skills are you developing? Beliefs? Attitudes?
5. Where are these skills, beliefs and attitudes likely to carry you next?
6. What external factors could influence your choices? How would they do so?
