Build the teaching into 30 days of structured daily practice.
30-Day Challenge Workbook
The Game of Life and How to Play It
Apply the Teaching
30-Day Challenge Workbook for The Game of Life and How to Play It
The Game of Life - 30-Day Challenge Workbook
Reading The Game of Life creates understanding. This 30-day workbook creates the practice - daily exercises that build Shinn's spoken word techniques into your operating system rather than leaving them as inspiring concepts you return to only when things go wrong.
The Game of Life - 30-Day Digital Workbook
The same 30-day workbook in a digital format - works with GoodNotes, Notability, and any PDF app.
The Game of Life - 30-Day Fillable Workbook
Type directly into the workbook in any PDF reader - all the same 30-day content with fillable form fields.
Inside the Workbook
30 days through every section of The Game of Life and How to Play It
1 - The Game
Life is a game governed by spiritual law - its rules are learnable. Most people play blindly, reacting to circumstances rather than directing them. The aim is to understand the rules and play consciously.
2 - The Law of Prosperity
Prosperity is a spiritual right, not a reward for effort. Consciousness of abundance or lack determines material circumstances - and giving is the activating mechanism that opens the channels of supply.
3 - The Power of the Word
Spoken words are creative forces that impress the subconscious and set law in motion. Every word either builds or destroys. Structured affirmations spoken with feeling and faith are the primary tool for transforming conditions.
4 - The Law of Nonresistance
What you resist persists; what you bless dissolves. Nonresistance is not passivity - it is the active spiritual stance of blessing and releasing rather than fighting. Nothing can withstand a truly nonresistant mind.
5 - The Law of Karma and Forgiveness
Karma is cause and effect - what you send out returns with accuracy. But forgiveness can neutralise negative karma, breaking the cycle of hurt and return. Resentment binds; forgiveness frees.
6 - Casting the Burden
Worry and anxiety impress the subconscious with fear rather than faith. Casting the burden means consciously releasing problems to Divine Intelligence through spoken declaration, activating spiritual solutions the anxious mind cannot access.
7 - Love
Love is the strongest magnetic force in the universe - not romantic attachment, but unconditional outpouring that demands nothing in return. All disease and unhappiness trace back to violations of the law of love; all healing begins with blessing.
8 - Intuition or Guidance
The superconscious communicates through the sudden hunch, the non-rational lead, the image that arrives without logical prompting. Following these leads - even when they appear irrational - is the practical skill of spiritual navigation.
9 - Perfect Self-Expression
Each person has a unique place to fill that no one else can fill and work to do that no one else can do. Aligning with this Divine Design removes the friction of misfit and allows supply to flow without strain.
10 - Denials and Affirmations
Structured spoken formulas for dismantling negative subconscious records and replacing them with new impressions. Shinn provides specific working affirmations for health, supply, love, and self-expression - the most directly actionable chapter in the book.
The Method
Reading the book and doing the work are not the same thing
Most people read Shinn's work, agree with it entirely, and then continue doing what they have always done. The gap is not understanding - it is practice. Understanding what the mind needs and consistently doing the work to give it that are two different capacities, and only one of them produces change.
Every exercise in the workbook is built on that distinction. CBT-style thought records identify the specific belief structure underneath a recurring pattern and interrupt it precisely. NLP timeline and future-pacing exercises take a principle from abstract understanding to felt, embodied rehearsal. Somatic check-ins anchor each session in the body rather than the head, because the subconscious communicates through physical sensation, not just through reasoning.
The 30-day structure is deliberate. Habit formation research puts the minimum threshold for a new behaviour to feel natural at 21-66 days, depending on complexity. 30 days sits at the lower end with a full review cycle - enough repetition to shift a default, not so long that momentum collapses before you finish.
How to Use It
Four things that make the difference
- 1
Print it and write by hand
Handwriting activates deeper processing than typing. The motor memory of physically writing a belief, a response, or an intention encodes it differently than keystrokes. Print the workbook and use a pen - it is a functional difference, not a stylistic preference.
- 2
Same time every day
Link the practice to an existing anchor - immediately after your first coffee, or the last thing before sleep. Habit stacking removes the daily decision of whether to do it. The decision is already made.
- 3
Do not skip the body check-in
The somatic prompts at the start of each session are the most skippable-looking part and the most important. What your body is holding at the moment you begin determines how deeply the exercises land. Two minutes of physical grounding before cognitive work changes the quality of everything that follows.
- 4
If you miss a day, continue from where you stopped
Do not restart. Restarting from day one after a miss turns the workbook into a test of willpower rather than a practice tool. The sequence builds on itself - day 15 is more useful after days 1-14, even with gaps.
Worth knowing
This is a practice system, not a reference tool
The workbook takes you through 30 days of structured exercises - it is not designed for quick reference or scanning. If you want the principles in a format you can pin up and return to in 30 seconds, that is what the cheat sheets are for. The cheat sheets are here.
Who This Is For
You'll get the most from this if…
- ✓You love affirmations but suspect you are saying them wrong - and your results confirm it
- ✓You want to understand the psychology behind Shinn's spoken word practice, not just the spiritual claim
- ✓You are navigating a specific challenge - money, love, career - and want targeted affirmations that work
- ✓You feel like you are fighting life rather than working with it, and want to understand the law of nonresistance
- ✓You are drawn to Shinn's warmth and practical faith but want the modern mechanism explained
- ✓You want a daily spoken word practice with real structure, not just phrases to repeat
Complete the Practice
Complete the The Game of Life and How to Play It practice
Quick-Start Cheat Sheets
The core principles across multiple printable pages.
Habit Tracker & Goal Planner
Track the micro-habits that compound into lasting change.
52-Week Daily Affirmation Calendar
52 weeks of daily affirmations - one for every day from May 2026 to April 2027.
Affirmation Card Deck
52 cards to carry the teaching into every part of your day.
The Toolkit
All five products for this work in one discounted bundle. Save 30%.
Annotated Edition
Christie L. Russell's annotated edition with neuroscience and NLP commentary.
About the Work
The Game of Life and How to Play It - New Thought, 1871-1940
Shinn's most famous work, framing life as a game with discoverable rules. She teaches that the spoken word, backed by faith and right action, activates spiritual law to produce tangible results.
The Science Behind It
Shinn's 'power of the spoken word' is not mystical - it's a form of linguistic priming. NLP formalised this as the presupposition principle: the brain treats spoken statements as instructions and organises experience to confirm them. Her affirmations work specifically when structured as already-accomplished facts because the subconscious processes language literally, without the qualifications the conscious mind adds. The 'fearlessness' she emphasised maps to what modern therapy calls acting from the window of tolerance - making decisions from a regulated nervous system rather than from fear or avoidance.
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