Life is a game. You are given time in life just like in any game. You must develop skills or hone those you have to perfection. You must develop a strategy to win in a game just as you must win in life. And you must have a strategy for sustenance of any success you may achieve. I always like to relate the game of life to various sports. You must understand that life is a team sport. Anywhere you go, you will find that any success recorded by anyone is a result of teamwork. Even where the endeavour is an individual one, it takes more than one person to develop. Imagine where Tiger Woods will be today without his trainers. Or any successful athlete without his/her coaches. In the end, life is always a team sport and success only belongs to those who learn to play in the team.

The beauty of individual sports is that it teaches you to perfect your skills and rely on no one on the field of play. Team sports, on the other hand, teach you to combine your skills with those of others to produce a commonly beneficial outcome. For the purpose of this article, I will use a cue sport: Billiards. In the game of billiards, you basically strive to attain a particular number of points before your opponent using three balls; one belonging to you, another to your opponent and another belonging to neither of you. By hitting the balls and sinking them in the various pockets, you get points which add up and the person who gets, say 100 point first, wins the game. Sounds simple but it requires the most precise skills you can master as well as the ability to think ahead of your opponent.

The lessons in cue sports I have learned which are applicable in life can be summarized as follows: