Magical Life Lessons are short snippets of wisdom learned from playing Magic the Gathering. It may be a game, but here you’ll find insights learned from slinging cards that you can apply to the game of life.

I’ve been playing Magic the Gathering on and off for around 20 years now, but I only started to understand many aspects of the game recently, after playing hours of Hearthstone and MTG Arena.

With online play, you can get in more games against a wide variety of players in a single sitting, so you learn quicker. If you’re open to learning, do some reading (or YouTube watching), your growth can spike quickly. The rest is all practice, lots and lots of practice.

And the same goes in life…

Magic Life Lesson #2 — Practice, Practice, Practice

Here are two covers I designed myself, using stock art:

I studied design as part of my degree, so you could argue that I knew what I was doing back in 2012 with my first RPG book cover. I won’t hold it against you if you disagree. Fast forward seven years to the present and my cover for Horde is far more solid, works better from a distance, and communicates what the game is about.

Practice alone won’t get you to where you want to be. In his book, Talent is Overrated, Geoff Colvin talks about how practice needs to be intelligently done. Pick something you need to work on, and focus your practice on it. You don’t go into a game of Magic with a set of random cards and hope to win, you plan your deck, try it out, and refine it after a few games.

Figure out one thing you want to improve about yourself, practice that skill until you nail it, then move to the next thing. Rinse and repeat. Don’t give up.

Rodney Sloan
Rising Phoenix Games

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