Starting Up Your Own Self Detective Agency
Part 8 - Objects

When you aren’t satisfied with an aspect of your life, sometimes a simple way to change it is to let go of it. To literally, or metaphorically, throw it in the bin.

This could be objects that have become clutter, or it could be thoughts, feelings or actions. It could also be some of your values and beliefs, which may have been useful to you at some point in your life but are now working against you. It could even be a person or a group of people.

If you can picture a bin in your mind, you can throw anything you want into it at any time in your life.

If it isn’t that straightforward to let something go – because, say, that something is a fixture in your life – then perhaps you can still use the bin to recognise that you want to spend as little time as possible with this thing/person.

On the flip side, what would you like to have close to you – for keeps? If something you have, want to have, or once had, is important to you, you may wish to put it into a treasure chest.
For example, people who are no longer alive, memories, or items that are precious to you.

1. Identify things that are not satisfactory to you in your life and you would like to get rid of.
2. Throw them in the bin.

1. Identify things that are important to you in your life.
2. Put them in your treasure chest.

The playing cards you are dealt at the beginning of a game will often determine how well you do in that game. Generally, ‘high’ cards like kings, queens and jacks put you in a strong position, whereas ‘low’ cards such as 2, 3 or 4 are seen as a bad hand.
Yet there are so many card games where different cards and suits mean different things.

Aces are sometimes high or sometimes low.
Spades are sometimes ‘trumps’, meaning that any spade will be higher than any card from another suit.
Jokers can sometimes be used as ‘wild’ cards, which means that they can be whatever you want them to be.

Q: Which five cards would you pick to represent your life at birth?
[NB: You may wish to use these cards to reflect the era you were born in, the parents you were given, your siblings, the life chances you had or did not have.]

Once you have chosen your cards, take a look at them, together with all the other cards you did not pick.

Q: What do you think the cards say about your start in life?

Think about yourself in the present moment. Do you still have the same cards you had at birth, or have some of them – maybe even all of them – changed?

Again, once you have chosen your cards, have a look at them, as well as looking at all the other cards you did not pick.

Q: What do you think the cards say about your life at this moment in time?

Think about the hopes or goals you have for the future.

Q: What cards might reflect these aims?

Q: What do these cards represent to you?

Q: What else might playing cards be useful for?
Q: Can you think of any other way to use playing cards creatively to highlight different aspects of your life?
For example:
Could certain cards represent all the significant people in your life, starting with one card that is you, and then the next person and the next person and so on?

[NB: If you do this last exercise on a table, try placing the cards down one at a time, then deciding if you are happy with where each card is in proximity to the card you have chosen for yourself and also its proximity to other people’s cards.]

Spinning plates can often be seen at the circus or variety shows. Performers (such as Henrik Bothe, illustrated) are able to balance more and more plates on top of sticks and keep them all spinning at the same time, without any of them falling.
It’s no mean feat.

If we took the spinning plate concept and applied it to our own SD world, could each plate represent a part of your life that you feel obliged to keep spinning or juggling? Could each plate be a person, or a situation, or a routine, or a habit, or a duty, or a dilemma, or a need, or a compulsion? If so:

Q: How many plates are you spinning at this very moment?
Q: Do you dare to name them?

Here are some examples, followed by an opportunity for you to record some of your own spinning plates.