I almost didn’t want to play. I only came when my friend Rachel invited us because I wanted to spend time with the girls. We hadn’t seen each other for more than a year, and that was reason enough for me to come. The game itself was really just the activity around which we would gather. Since I had also been losing interest in board games lately, somewhere in my mind, I had already decided that I might get bored easily.

Then I found out that I was going to have to write things down so that also terrified me a little. Anyone who knows personality profiling will understand when I say there is very little green in my personality. 😂 I am not naturally drawn to sitting down, recording things, keeping track of details, and methodically working through information. I would much rather feel my way through something and figure it out as I go. I wasn’t expecting much from the game but what I didn’t expect was to find myself becoming completely absorbed in it.

The Wealth & Joy Simulation takes you through different stages of life. You earn money, spend it, invest, make decisions, encounter opportunities and unexpected events, and experience the consequences of the choices you make along the way. There are moments when things seem to be flowing beautifully, and there are moments when something happens that changes the direction of the game. It sounds simple enough. As I immerse deeper in the game, I realized that between playing and laughing with friends, I began to notice that I wasn’t just playing a game about money. I was actually watching and observing myself and my patterns.

One of the first things I noticed was how useful it was to actually write things down. The part I initially dreaded turned out to be one of the things I appreciated most. When everything is in your head, it can feel like you have a lot or like you don’t have enough. Once you put it on paper, things become clearer. You can see what you have. You can see what is missing. You can compare your options. Decisions become easier. It made me think about how often we do the same thing in life. We carry our plans, resources, responsibilities, dreams, and worries around in our heads and then wonder why everything feels complicated and overwhelming when we simply need to see it.

The game also happened to resonate with the particular flow of my life at the moment. For the most part, things were moving quite smoothly for me. I was getting good turns and making decisions that seemed to take me closer to where I wanted to go. There were little temptations and diversions along the way but nothing dramatic. I am getting just enough to make me pause and consider whether I wanted to spend my time, money, or energy on something that wasn’t really part of the bigger picture. That was interesting to notice. I realized that if I remain focused on what actually matters to me, and don’t allow myself to be easily swayed by every distraction that appears along the way, getting into my own version of “V-flow” can actually be quite simple.

I realized that in life, the challenge isn’t always knowing where we want to go. Usually the more challenging thing is resisting everything that invites us to go somewhere else.

While I was having what felt like a fairly good run, I was also watching the other players and this was where the game became unexpectedly emotional for me. I witnessed some of my friends go through what the game calls an S-flow. I didn’t personally experience the same thing, but I could feel the sudden drop in emotion when it happened to them. It is difficult to explain unless you are actually sitting around the table with other people. I didn’t just watch what happens to them. I also felt it. At least I did. My empath heart immediately responded to the changes in the room. I could feel the fear, the disappointment, the uncertainty. Even though it wasn’t happening to me, some part of me experienced the emotional shift with them.

It reminded me that we often forget when we are focused on our own lives: everyone is going through something. Someone can appear to be doing beautifully while quietly dealing with a setback we know nothing about. There are times when we are the ones who need to learn how to stay steady while someone beside us is going through theirs. Interestingly, even when I was having good turns, fear was still present. I found myself thinking twice about some of my decisions, not necessarily because things were going badly, but because the possibility that things could suddenly change was always there. That, too, felt very much like life.

We can be doing everything “right” and still encounter something unexpected. We can be careful with our choices, build our resources, stay focused on our goals, and create a life that feels stable and still experience a setback. There is also a time when another player pulled a card that created a group S-flow. I hadn’t even experienced the setback myself, but somehow it affected the direction of my own game. It pulled me back from some of the goals I had been moving toward. I began thinking, "Ah. So this is part of it too."

Life doesn’t only happen to us individually. Other people’s circumstances, collective events, changes in the environment, things completely outside our control can also affect the lives we have carefully built. We can prepare, but we cannot control everything.

Which brings me to what may have been one of my biggest realizations from the game. Energy matters. You can have money, resources and opportunities. You can even have a beautifully planned life but when your energy runs out, none of those things matter in quite the same way. There is something humbling about seeing that represented in a game. It lead me back to when I was consuming and directing my energy to people and things that do not matter which depleted my heart. Usually that reality is painful. We often treat energy as though it is an unlimited resource. We spend it on work, on obligations, on people, on worry, on things that don’t really matter, and on distractions that seemed important in the moment. Then at the end of the day, we wonder why we no longer have the energy to enjoy the life we worked so hard to create. The game brought that idea into a very tangible space.

It made me think about wealth differently. Wealth isn’t simply the amount of money we accumulate. It is also our capacity to experience and enjoy the life that money is supposed to support. What good is having more if you have no energy left to enjoy it? What good are opportunities if you are too exhausted to take them? What good is reaching a goal if you have depleted yourself completely along the way?

This is why I think this game can be especially meaningful for children. Kids are already learning about money, whether we consciously teach them or not. They watch how adults spend. They hear conversations about what the family can or cannot afford. They learn what is considered important. They experience wanting something and having to wait for it. There are some concepts that are difficult to explain through lectures. A game can make them visible. Through play, children can experience what happens when they spend everything, when they save, when they take a risk, when they make a choice because they are tempted, when something unexpected happens, and when they suddenly realize that they don’t have enough resources for what they want. Through the game, they can begin to see that money is connected to choices. And choices are connected to the kind of life we create.

I came into the game expecting to spend an afternoon with my friends. I left thinking about my own life. I thought about where my focus goes, the distractions I entertain and my fears. I started thinking about how quickly circumstances can change, how other people’s experiences can affect us, the importance of preparing for setbacks and writing things down so we can actually see what we have and what we need.

The game made me value energy more than I already do. I have learned this a long time ago, but playing the game reinforced that energy is the one resource we often forget to include when we calculate the cost of a life we want.

Don't get me wrong, the game may give one so much profound insignts but it isn't a so serious game since we also laughed a lot especially when we are about to make questionable decisions hehehe. I think it is a good balance of having fun and also learning about how we live our lives. We celebrated good turns and felt the sting of bad ones. We watched each other navigate choices and consequences. After not seeing one another for more than a year, perhaps that was the greatest gift of the afternoon: we were sitting around the same table again.

This made me strongly believe that the most meaningful learning doesn’t happen in a classroom. Most of the time, it happens around a table with people you love, while everyone is trying to figure out what to do with the cards they’ve been dealt. This is what I liked most about the Wealth & Joy Simulation Game.

The game didn't tell me what kind of life I should want. Instead, it gave me a chance to see what my choices can create.

Oh by the way, if you’d like to experience the simulation for yourself, my friend offers it as a facilitated experience. I genuinely enjoyed going through it that is why I am sharing and writing about this. I can especially see its value for families and young people who are beginning to form their own understanding of money, choices, and what it means to build a life that is not only financially abundant, but also full of joy.

It really helps to play at life before life gets too expensive.