Self Realized, Shatter Your Limits

How To Win The Game of Life: Mindset & Success

• Linton Bergsen • Episode 121

Share episode

How To Win the Game of Life: Mindset & Success

Redefine success from the inside out—shift your mindset, reclaim your energy, and build a daily practice aligned with peace and purpose. 

If the outside looks like a win but the inside feels like a loss, something’s off. This episode of the Self Realized, Shatter Your Limits podcast with me, Linton Bergsen, unpacks the hidden rules silently steering your choices—the inner scoreboard that defines real success—and how to rewrite those rules to lead your life with peace, purpose, energy, and connection.

You’ll learn how to spot the old programs running your life—beliefs like “I must never disappoint anyone” or “money equals conflict”—and replace them with conscious principles that align with who you are becoming. You’ll explore three game‑changing mindset shifts: 

  • Moving from victim to player. 
  • Trading short‑term comfort for long‑term alignment. 
  • Shift from trying to prove your worth to expressing who you truly are.

Through relatable stories, reflective questions, and simple micro‑exercises, you’ll build momentum that nourishes rather than drains you. Plus, discover a tangible three‑part practice:

  • Choose one aligned move each morning.
  • Notice your choice points during the day.
  • Close the evening with a compassionate review.

You’ll reframe setbacks as training—not identity—so experience becomes fuel for growth, not friction. If you’re ready to stop auditioning and start authoring your life, press play, take a breath, and make one powerful move your future self will thank you for.

If this episode resonates, follow Self Realized, Shatter Your Limits on your favorite platform. Leave a rating or review and share it with someone who looks like they’re winning but feels empty inside. Your next choice can change the entire game—what move will you make today?

Visit selfrealized.com for more resources including my five-star Amazon reviewed book Purposeful Vision.

Let me know your thoughts on this episode. Text me your feedback! 🙂

https://www.selfrealized.com

Linton Bergsen:

Welcome to the self-realized podcast with Linton Bergsen, where you will shatter your limits. I'm not much into the self-help industry, as much as I'm into the self-realized individual, which is you, what matters most to you, how you get there, and the obstacles that may be in your way. If you would like to be part of this podcast and part of that discussion, I welcome you here with an open heart, open mind, and open arms. So , without further adu, let's get on with the podcast. Take a breath and imagine this. You wake up tomorrow morning and realize that the game of life you've been playing is rigged. Not by some dark conspiracy out there, but by the quiet rules inside your own mind. Rules you never consciously agree to. Rules like I only matter if I am achieving. I will only be happy when I finally get there. Other people get to win. I just get to survive. Today that ends. In this episode, you are going to rewrite the rules. You are going to remember that you are not just a piece on the board. You are the one who chooses how you play. This is episode number 121. How to win the game of life, mindset and success. You are here because some part of you is tired of chasing, tired of pretending, and ready to live a life that actually feels like a win on the inside, not just the scoreboard outside. So if you are ready to stop playing small, to stop playing by the rules that were never yours, and to step into your own power that you have been carrying all along. Stay with this, take one more deep breath, and let's begin. Let us take a look at what winning really means. You know when people hear win the game of life, they usually picture the highlight reel. The house, the car, the career, the partner, the followers, the bank balance. There is nothing wrong with any of that. But here is the uncomfortable question. If the outside looks like a win, but the inside feels like a loss, did you really win? Let's start with a story. There was a man who did everything right. He ticked every box, the degree, the respectable job, the nice neighborhood, the vacations where he took pictures, mostly so other people could see them. From the outside, he looked like he was absolutely crushing the game. But inside he felt like he was being crushed by it. On his commute home, he would sit in traffic, gripping the steering wheel, and think, if this is winning, why do I feel so empty? One evening, his young daughter asked him, Daddy, why are you always so tired when you are winning? That question hit him harder than any deadline, any performance review, any critic. Because she was right. He had been chasing someone else's scoreboard. So let's make this practical for you. Let us do an exercise now where you can look at your own inner scoreboard. If you can, grab a notebook or the notes app on your phone. If you're driving, just do this in your mind and come back to it later. Rate yourself from 1 to 10 in each of these areas, with 1 being I feel like I'm losing, and 10 being I feel deeply aligned and alive. Let's start out with peace. How peaceful do you feel today? Purpose. How connected do you feel to something meaningful in your life? Energy. How alive, how energized and present do you feel? Connection. How real and honest are your closest relationships? Now look at those numbers. You may be doing great in some, you may feel like you're losing in others. But this is your true scoreboard, not your salary, not your follower count, not the size of your home or your bank balance. If the inner scoreboard is losing, it does not matter how many trophies you stack on the shelf. Winning the game of life begins by daring to tell the truth about where you stand. Not to beat yourself up, but to finally give yourself a chance to play a different game. However, contemplate on this for a moment. You cannot play a different game if you don't understand the hidden rules running your life. Every game has rules. Chess has rules. Soccer has rules. Even a children's board game has rules printed right there on the box. However, in the game of life most people are playing, those rules are really written down. They're absorbed, inherited, and imprinted in our childhood and then into our subconscious as habits, therefore recurring patterns of behavior. Maybe you heard real men don't cry. Nice girls don't make waves. Money doesn't grow on trees. You have to work twice as hard to be worth half as much. Over time, these messages don't sound just like suggestions. They begin to start to sound like laws. Here is a story. A woman grows up in a house where her parents constantly fought about money. The phrase she heard over and over was, We can't afford that. Money is always our problem. No one sat her down and said, Your rule in life is that money equals stress and conflict. But that is the message she absorbed. Fast forward twenty years. She is doing well in her career, she is finally making more money than her parents ever did, but every time she starts to get ahead, she unconsciously finds a way to sabotage it. Overspending, giving away her time for free. Why? Because one of her hidden rules, playing in her subconscious, in her mind, says having money means having conflict. Safety is found in lack. Until she sees the rule, she can never change the game. Here is something that I will give you to help you discover your hidden rules. If you can write, do this now. If not, listen and revisit later. At the top of the page, write the rules I've been playing by. Without censoring, write down three to five rules you may have absorbed. They often start with I must, I can't, people like me don't. If I do X, then Y will happen. Let me give you some examples of that. I must never disappoint anyone. I cannot risk failing in public. People like me don't become truly wealthy or free. For each rule, ask yourself two questions. Where did I learn this? Is this actually true for me now? Then for each one, write a new rule that supports the life you actually want. For example, old rule, I must never disappoint anyone. New rule, I honor others, but I will not abandon myself. Old rule, people like me don't become truly wealthy. New rule, my past does not limit what I can create now. You are not trying to lie to yourself. You are choosing conscious rules instead of unconscious ones coming from old subconscious programming. The moment you see a rule, you are no longer blindly obeying it. You are starting to step into the role you are always meant to play. The author of your own game and book of life. You write the chapters that you want to read about your life on an ongoing daily basis. So when you review your book of life chapter by chapter, you would have written the rules for each one. That is how to win the game of life, mindset and success. Mindset shifts that game. Let's move into the heart of this. The mindset shifts that turn the board around. We will explore three today. As you listen, notice which one lands the hardest. That's usually the one that your life is asking you to pay the most attention to right now. Shift number one from victim of the game to player with agency. A victim mindset sounds like life is happening to me. I don't have any choice. A player mindset says life brings situations. I always have a choice in how I respond, what I believe, and what I choose to do next. Let me share a story with you. There was a man who felt like life was always against him. If traffic was bad, it was just my luck. If a relationship ended, it was proof that no one stayed. If a job didn't work out, it was the universe shutting me down. One day, after yet another disappointment, he sat on his couch and had this self-realization. Something painful and liberating. Every story he told himself ended with, see, I am powerless. He wasn't just living his circumstances, he was living his conclusions. Sometimes we do that. We reach a conclusion before we have run the experiment to see what we are truly capable of. So he decided to try a radical experiment. For thirty days, every time something went wrong, he would ask one question. If I were a powerful player in this moment, what would I do next? Not how do I fix everything? Just what is my next powerful move? Sometimes the move was to set a boundary. Sometimes it was to rest instead of just numbing out. Sometimes it was to finally speak the truth in a relationship. His life didn't transform overnight. But over time the game changed. Not because the board changed, but because the player did. Your turn. Think of one situation in your life right now where you feel powerless. Maybe it's money, maybe it is a relationship, maybe it is your own habits. Ask yourself out loud if you can. If I were a powerful player here, what would my next move be? Not the perfect move, not the dramatic movie scene move, just the next honest, courageous move. Because it does take courage. That is where your true power lives. Let us take a look now at shift number two. How to win the game of life. Not just for short term comfort, but for long term alignment. The game of life loves to offer you short term comfort at the price of long term regret. Scroll instead of create, numb instead of feel, say yes instead of setting a boundary. Short term you get relief. Long term, you feel smaller and more disconnected from who you really are. Imagine two paths. On the first path, every time you feel uncomfortable, you reach for something that soothes but shrinks you. On the second path, every time you feel uncomfortable, you pause, breath and ask. What would be aligned with the life I say I want? Let me share a story with you. A woman wanted to start sharing her voice, writing, creating, speaking. Every evening after work she felt the nudge. Just give it twenty minutes. And every evening she felt the whisper. Just watch something instead. You'll start tomorrow. She wasn't lazy, she was protecting herself from the vulnerability of being seen. One evening she made a deal with herself. I can still watch something, but first I owe myself fifteen minutes of aligned action. Most nights, fifteen minutes became thirty. Sometimes it stayed ten, but the point wasn't perfection. The point was direction. Taking what I love to call aligned action gives you direction, purpose, and outcome. Six months later her life looked different. Not because of one big decision, but because of dozens of small aligned choices. You don't have to take big steps to start seeing results in the direction that you would like to take. Here is an exercise I suggest you can use, and it will help you move in the direction that you would like to go. I refer to it as the micro exercise, the comfort swap. Name one pattern of short-term comfort you use to avoid discomfort. Scrolling, snacking, over committing, binge watching. Now name one simple long-term aligned action you can take instead, just for ten or fifteen minutes. Writing, planning, moving your body, having the honest conversation that you may have been avoiding with someone. For the next seven days, when the urge for comfort arises, just once per day, choose the aligned action first, even for a few minutes. You're not trying to erase comfort, you are training your nervous system to see that you can survive discomfort in service of a life that feels like a win. Shift number three is really about you owning who you are, from proving your worth to expressing who you are. Many people are not living, they are auditioning, trying to prove they are enough, successful enough, spiritual enough, impressive enough, that is exhausting, and it is a game that you can never fully win because the goalposts always move. I was coaching a creator called John, who spent many years trying to make things that would impress everyone family, friends, peers, strangers on the internet. He felt like he was constantly rehearsing a version of himself he hoped people would clap for. One day, burnt out and numb, he sat in silence and asked a different question. If there was no one to impress, what would I create? Who would I be? The answer surprised him. He wanted to create things that told the truth. He wanted to work with people he genuinely liked. He wanted to live a life that felt honest when no one was looking. Slowly his work shifted. It became an expression of who he was becoming, not a performance designed to earn approval. That was the moment he stopped playing to the crowd and started playing his own game. Contemplate on this for a moment. If I wasn't trying to prove anything to anyone, not even to myself, what would winning look like for me? Let the answer be simple. It might be about freedom, peace, creativity, love, contribution. Write it down if you can. That is a glimpse of your true game. The question how to win the game of life is by you building your daily win the game of life practice. Big insights without daily practice become beautiful ideas that never touch your life. Winning the game of life is not about one huge breakthrough. It is about the way you live in the ordinary moments. Here is a simple daily framework I'm going to give you that you can use and adapt it to your world. In the morning, set the tone that you would like the day to begin with and continue with. Before you touch your phone, give yourself just 5 minutes. Sit, breath, and ask, what kind of player do I choose to be today. Choose one quality. Courage, curiosity, kindness, focus, honesty, joy. Then ask, what is one aligned move I could make today that my future self will thank me for? Write it down. One move, not ten. This is your daily win move. As you move through the day, make conscious choices. Be self-aware and notice as the little choice points arrive in your life. Say what you mean or stay silent. Don't scroll on the internet mindlessly. Instead, take one aligned action toward your goal. React from old rules or respond from your new ones. When you catch a choice point, ask, is this choice moving me forward toward my game or away from it? You may not always choose the aligned action, but that's okay. The win is in noticing and choosing differently more often. In the evening, take a moment and review, like a compassionate coach, at night before bed. Just take three minutes and ask yourself, where did I act from fear today? Where did I act from truth today? What did I learn about my rules and my power? You are not here to judge yourself. You are here to compassionately coach yourself. Over weeks and months, this simple rhythm rewires your relationship with life. You begin to feel less like a passenger and more like a conscious player. We both know that life is not perfect, and you are going to handle setbacks and losses. Even when you play well, you will lose some rounds. Relationships end, plans fall apart, money gets tight, health scares arise. Losing a round doesn't mean you are losing the game. Think of a time in your life when something didn't work out. At one time it felt like the end of the world. Then, years later, you could see how it shaped you, that chapter of your life, that book that you are writing, as I mentioned earlier. It made you stronger, clearer, and deeper. At the time it was a loss. In hindsight, it was training. Here is an exercise I would like to give you. I suggest that you use it for reframing loss. Bring to mind one experience you still label a failure, mistake, or loss. Ask yourself, what did this experience teach me about myself? What skill or strength did it force me to develop? How has it made me more capable of winning my game now? If you can, write a new sentence about that event, starting with, because this happened, I am now able to. You are not denying the pain, you are reclaiming your power. In the game of life, experience is your greatest asset if you are willing to learn from it instead of labeling yourself with it. Take a breath with this. You came into this episode with a lifetime of rules that you did not choose, stories that you have been living inside of, scoreboards that may never have been yours. Yet you are still here, still listening, still willing to ask, is there more to me than this? That willingness alone is power. Today you have looked honestly at your inner scoreboard, exposed some of the hidden rules that have been running your life, stepped inside mindset shifts that move you from victim to player, from comfort to alignment, from proving to expressing. And you have been given a simple daily framework to practice winning, not in some distant future, but in the small choices you make every day. Here is the truth. You are not behind, you are certainly not broken, you are not late to your own life. You are exactly where your next powerful choice can be made. So here is your invitation, your call to action. Do the exercises. Just don't think about them. Write down your hidden rules. Rewrite them. Create your inner scoreboard. Design your daily win the game practice. Even ten honest minutes today can begin a different future for you. Choose one powerful move before this day ends. Ask, what is one move my future self will thank me for? Then do it. Send the message, start the project, set the boundary, rest intentionally instead of numbing out. Make one move that says, I am playing my game now. Share this episode with one person. You know someone who is exhausted from playing the wrong game, someone who looks like they're winning but feels like they are losing. Send this to them and say, listen to this, you are not alone. Your game can change. And if this spoke to you, if something in you woke up, even just a little bit, make sure you follow, subscribe, rate, and review the show. Not for vanity metrics, but so that this can work and reach more people who are ready to remember who they are and why they are really here. As you step back into your day, remember. You are not just a piece on the board. You are the player, you are the rule maker, you are the one who decides what winning means in the only place it truly matters. Inside your own heart. Thank you for walking this path, for daring to look within, for being willing to play a different game. Until next time, live awake, live aligned, and keep shattering the limits that were never really yours. I sincerely appreciate you listening to the podcast. Please subscribe so you do not miss any upcoming episodes. Whatever platform you're on, please leave a rating and review. I would greatly appreciate it. Any additional information on me, Linton Bergsen, and my five star review book, Purposeful Vision, is available at selfrealized.com, which is all one word. You can also leave any comments or suggestions on the website.