Dear Ludic Liberators,
I haven’t published a proper Lab Report with findings from the Labs in a few months. What have I lost and gained in (not) doing so?
Gained:
A bit more time and attention for other things
A freedom from an arbitrary, self-imposed weekly responsibility
Release from worry about being read (both whether I’m read at all and whether I’m read by any of you affirmatively or judgmentally)… No emails, no worries!
Trust in and appreciation for my subscribers sticking with me through periods of newsletter draught…. thank you! 🙏
Lost:
A sense of accomplishment from maintaining an a consistent writing streak
A little bit of connection to Existential Gamemaker & Researcher as one of my professional identities… if I’m not “doing it” as much, am I still “it”?
A clearer articulation of my insights from the Ludic Liberation Labs that always emerge in the process of writing these reports
Possibly some trust and commitment from my subscribers
Several subscribers who have unsubscribed (although they could have unsubscribed for other reasons - who ever knows?)
Since last month’s Ludic Liberation Lab on relational risk (specifically the risks of giving and receiving), I’ve been obsessed with observing the trade-offs in every decision — what is lost, what is gained. What am I willing to lose in order to gain something else? What can I tolerate gaining to give up something I no longer want?
To explore this question, I invited the Lab participations to play a new existential game that I’m calling I WILL LOSE TO GAIN.
Here’s how you play. Start with something important to you, something you don’t want to give up and put it on the line (verbally/theoretically) to gain something else. For example: I really value my 3 cats. I love spending time and sharing space with them. But I will give that up (temporarily!) in order to have an adventure in the outside world (e.g., go out to an event or leave for a few days to travel).
Once you’ve got your first “I will lose X to gain Y,” keep going. Put your Y on the line to gain Z.
I will give up an adventure in the outside world to gain a really deeply profound vivid sleeping dream. But I will lose a beautiful vivid sleeping dream to gain a few hours of productivity. Yet I will lose productivity to gain a thrilling intimate conversation with someone I’m attracted to. Etc, etc.
You can play this game with a group, taking turns making the statements and trading the previous player’s gain as your loss. It’s best to play a few rounds, to get to a place where the idea of voluntarily giving something up begins to really hurt and feel almost unimaginable, but reveals a truth you might have been unwilling to admit.
Every act, including the decision to not act, involves a trade-off and a risk. The decision not to do something surrenders the possibility of a life-changing experience, encounter, or epiphany . The decision to pursue a new opportunity surrenders the comfort and control of the familiar. Even when it feels like you’re only gaining positive things in your life (e.g., more & more love or money or fun), you’re always losing something (e.g., more same or other potential love, the creativity of not having money, hours of sleep, etc.).
During the lab, as we placed greater and greater existential bets (e.g., losing financial abundance for a sense of righteousness, giving up enlightenment for the temporary thrill of illusion), we began to appreciate that the capacity to gain more is correlated with the ability to tolerate proportionally bigger losses. In other words, the more we want from life the more we must be willing to part with.
Playing with existential risk in this collaboratively imaginative way can help us access our “havingness level” — the internal metric of how much “good stuff” we are able to tolerate receiving from the universe before it starts to feel “too good to be true” and lead us to reject what we’re given or sabotage our own success.
But it’s only practicing taking actual risks that truly stretches our capacity to receive and to enjoy what we are given.
I want to invite you into two risk-taking endeavors where you can flex your capacity for accepting more risk AND reward into your life.
At the next Ludic Liberation Lab, this Thursday, October 13, we will play TRUTH GAMES, aiming at both revealing hidden truths to each other and playing with artful relational truth-masking. You can lose 1.5 hours to gain thrill, clarity, and a greater sense of courage in your relationship to truth-telling! Otherwise, it’s FREE!
This Fall, the Deep Play Institute is hosting a workshop series called “Playing with Transformation” that includes a session I’ll be leading on how to design your own existential game. You can lose $200-400 (sliding scale) and gain access to six online workshops (2 hours each) on psychodrama, somatic experiencing, internal family systems, identity play, and other fun modalities with a roster of incredible deep play facilitators! In other words, you can gain SIX life-changing opportunities for the price of one not-very-good drone.
I will lose hours of my day and the protection of my invisibility to gain even a little bit your distracted attention 🙇,
Natalia (Existential Gamemaker / Destroyer)
♾️🎲 +/-
Lab Report #28: I Will Lose ___ to Gain ___.
In a bittersweet turn of events,
I will lose an opportunity to play with you in order to gain an opportunity to play with others. Cannot attend the Thursday lab, but I look forward to introducing others to the risk/reward lose/gain game! I will share observations once I’ve got ‘em!!!