Lessons Candy Crush Has Taught Me

We all have that one friend that whips out her phone during any down time and stares intently at the screen crushing candies until she inevitable runs out of lives and then starts asking you to send them to her. In some circles, it’s two people that send each other lives. In some circles, it’s that one friend that keeps telling you to start playing Candy Crush because it’s “the best game ever! No really, try it!” Some of us might even be that (girl)friend that installed it on her man’s phone just so she could send herself live (may or may not have been guilty of this in the past). But what can we make of this Candy Crush phase? Here are a few lessons this addicting game has taught me?

1) Think ahead – as you progress in the levels, it’s less about just moving around the candies and more about planning ahead. What you do during one move can affect the board later on and come back and bite you. Planning ahead can save you grief later on and thinking about how your actions can affect things down the road.

2) Sometimes you just get lucky – no matter how strategic you are, sometimes you just need a little luck. Sometime the board is stacked in your favor, sometimes you just happen to do the right thing at the right time. Luck isn’t something you should count on but if it plays into your hand, don’t question it. just let it happen.

3) Patience, patience, patience – things don’t always happen on the first try. Or even the fifth try. Or even the 234748365 try. Just be patient. If things were always easy, we would never feel a sense of accomplishment when we finished something hard. Patience helps us learn the ethics of hard work and it keeps us hungry.

4) Take a break – after a week or two of being stuck on the same level, sometimes I feel like throwing my phone (on my bed so it doesn’t break, let’s not get crazy) and screaming at the world. At that point, it’s time to take a break. Like everything else in life (work, relationships, math, cooking), sometimes you just need to step back and take a break from it all. Sometimes we put on our concentration caps so we can focus but sometimes that cap becomes tunnel vision and we’re unable to see past our box. Taking a break and stepping away from it all gives us a chance to regroup and our brains a chance to think about something else. I find that after a break, 15 minutes or a full night’s rest, the level doesn’t seem so challenging anymore.

5) Rely on your friends – Candy Crush is really a social game. Granted it’s not Survivor or anything like that, but it helps to have some friends on your side. Whether it be to ask for extra lives, a little advice on a particularly hard level, or just to provide a little friendly competition, having friends is a plus. Also, you need your friends for support (and tickets). Without them, you’d lead a lonely existence and be a hermit.

6) Sometimes, shit happens – sometimes, no matter what you do, everything explodes and you’re left with shit on the board. It happens. Just like luck happens, shit also happens. There’s nothing to do but shake it off and move on. Those stupid hurricanes wreak havoc on everything and all you can do is grimace, curse a little, and move on.

So there it is: life lessons from Candy Crush. What else has this colorful, addicting game taught you?