Lessons Learnt From Candy Crush

Anyone who knows me close-up will know about my love and near addiction to candy crush. If you’ve ever had access to my phone, you’ll notice that the Candy Crush app is often open in my phone… It’s one of my favorite pastimes. I play it on my way home from work, on most nights before I sleep (even on nights when I’m so exhausted after the day’s work) and sometimes, I fall asleep while playing it… I use it as a ‘stress ball’ when my brain needs a break at work and sometimes, I get carried away while playing that I forget the important things on my desk I need to attend to. #coversface.

Well, my affinity for candy crush has paid off over time as I have learnt so many interesting lessons about life just by crushing some candies. Here are my top 8 lessons learnt from Candy Crush:

1. Without understanding, you can’t win a game – My post on Understanding Is Key was actually inspired by my playing Candy crush. When I first ‘met’ candy crush, I was just interested in matching colors without understanding what the target for each level was. Twas fine for the first few levels cos the targets were easy to meet but the more advanced levels I got to, the more I realized that I needed to understand the instructions and targets for a level before I can win that level. Same applies to real life scenarios – without understanding, you will have few hits and plenty misses! Please read the post on Understanding Is Key.
2. Read and follow instructions – After I got the lesson on Understanding being key, I realized that I couldn’t know or understand the target for each level without paying attention to the instructions for each level.

Each candy crush level comes with specific instructions and if you don’t read and follow them, you may end up scoring 1, 000, 000 without hitting the target. And you’ll most likely get this message: Level Failed. Life comes with instructions, read and follow them to not play amiss. Life’s instructions can be found in the books of the Bible – Genesis through Revelations.

3. Life is full of opportunities – Different Candy crush levels come with different number of moves. Some have as much as 50 moves while some have less than 10 moves. This moves represent opportunities for you to make decisions and take steps that’ll help you complete a level successfully.

What conscious decisions and steps are you taking to successfully complete your current level in life? Please read Options And Choices

4. Once there is life, there is hope – Candy crush comes with a maximum of 5 lives per time. Once you have a life, you can win a level. This means that with 5 full lives, if you play and fail a level, you have hope of replaying and winning that level with the remaining 4 lives. And well, if you still fail the level after exhausting the 5 lives, there’s still hope – you’ll just have to wait 30 minutes to get a new life or you can ask a friend to give you one. (I sometimes wish we have 5 full lives like candy crush, lol)

Thank God for Christ, even after we die here on earth, we have hope of eternal life in Him.

5. Life/opportunities are time bound – For some candy crush levels, you don’t get to play at your leisure time rate, they come with preprogrammed time frame. Some 30 seconds, some 60 seconds, some 120 seconds, etc., depending on the level you’re playing. Same applies to life and the opportunities we’re given. We have limited time frames to do the things we’re required to do per level if we must excel. Learn to maximize each moment.

6. All levels are not equal – Some candy crush levels are tougher than some others. Some levels took me less than 3 minutes to scale through while some have taken me more than 3 weeks to pass. So is life. Some levels in life take a ‘moment’ while some others take years for you to scale through them. Sometimes you need to scale through an easy level to get to a tough one and vice versa. Please read the post on When The Going Gets Tough.

7. Sometimes, winning is just by chance – There are some candy levels I scaled through simply by chance! You just match some color and it triggers a chain reaction that has you winning the level in few moves. Sometimes, winning in life is by chance not by strategic planning (Ecclesiastes 9:11).

Winning happening by chance means it is a probability and sometimes rare possibility –  don’t rely on it.

8. Candy crush is just a game – enjoy it! From experience, I have noticed that anytime I was so hung up on winning a level, I failed it instead. Candy crush is a game designed for your playing pleasure. It can get your adrenaline pumping faster if you let it, but that will not guarantee your success. You have more chances of winning a level when you are relaxed than when you are anxious to win. The moment I learnt this lesson, just matching colors, bringing down fruits and clearing jellies became fun again! Same applies to life, anxiety causes more misses than hits. Relax and enjoy each level.

Bonus point – Life is colorful and beautiful! The first thing that attracted me to candy crush is the beautiful combination of colors used.

But well, some people are color blind so they can’t appreciate this beauty.

So is life – Colorful and Beautiful! But some can’t appreciate this beauty cos they’re color blind. And the secret of seeing the color and beauty of life is embedded in Christ. I strongly recommend Sinach’s ‘You Make My Life So Beautiful’ (click here to listen/watch). Don’t let anyone’s color blind view of life tint your beautiful view, the reverse should be the case Help them to appreciate life’s color and beauty by showing them the light #smiles.

Do you enjoy playing candy crush as much as I do? What lessons have you learnt from it? Please share.

And yes, it mustn’t be candy crush! Please share lessons from other games you enjoy playing.

Looking forward to learning from your lessons.

Much Love

ChinyereDistinguished