I’m a very competitive person. It’s in my DNA. I can’t help myself. When the kids were toddlers I had to beat them at every game going…snap, tiddlywinks, bouncing down the garden on a Spacehopper. I’m not proud of it.

This same urge to ‘be the best’ surfaces in my spiritual group meetings and is never helpful. Today, we were asked to say the first thing that came into our heads, when a partner whispered ‘Who are you?’

Well I took that literally. Pictures of things flashed in my mind and I said them out loud. A pencil sharpener. Coffee. Boots. A crow. etc. This went on for five minutes and I urged myself to keep coming up with mental images as I didn’t want to be stuck for something to say.

Next, I had to whisper ‘Who Are you?’ to a partner. Her answers, which I can’t repeat for confidentiality reasons, sounded so profound compared to mine. She was at one with the cosmos whilst I was reduced to stationary, snacks and weather patterns.

Then my sister revealed that it had been the most intense and moving spiritual experience she’d had to date. She too had been one with the universe and was practically floating on one of Saturn’s rings for the rest of the day.

In my rush to get things right, do it properly and be the best I could possibly be, I’d missed the point. ‘You have to ‘feel’ the answers,’ a fellow participant told me.

The point of the exercise, is to get beyond the labels you give yourself, although I didn’t bother with the usual wife, sister, mother, friend etc, I went straight into stationary. When you feel you are running out of words, that’s when it goes deep and you start saying and feeling as if you are one with the universe.

This is a metaphor for my life really. I am so busy trying to do things properly, do my absolute best and not break the rules, I miss the spiritual point. I did exactly the same in the ‘I am’ game we played a few months ago. I did as I was told and got the whole thing back to front.

The moral of this story? I guess it’s to stop trying so hard. I need to surrender and let my higher self take the reins. It doesn’t care about snap, tiddlywinks or Spacehoppers because it sees the bigger picture. Must not try harder.