These Board Games Make Personal Growth Fun
By: Stark Raving
Tags: Board Games, Personal Growth, Mental Health, Self Improvement, Self

These Board Games Make Personal Growth Fun

A great new way to set your goals and practise self-care.

Photo by the author

It’s no secret that millennials are shifting away from buying things to buying experiences. A study by Harris Group showed that 72 per cent of young people would rather spend money on an experience than a material item. One direct consequence of this has been an explosion in board game sales. Boardgame nights are acknowledged as being a cool way to spend an evening with friends around a common activity. Games themselves are evolving into works of art — complicated scenarios come with beautiful illustrations, which transport you to new worlds — some bleak, some pretty, and some that make you wonder what amount of drugs was consumed in their conception.

While I’ve been a fan of board games for several years, I only recently found out about a branch of games designed to lead you through self-care and personal growth exercises, gamified to make it fun. Last Sunday, a few friends and I, all of us rolling in the waves of hungover regret, settled around a table for a gaming sess and found ourselves sharing deep personal memories, setting goals for the coming months and naming each other accountability buddies to insure that we kept our promises.

Expressing gratitude, mindfully setting intentions, reviewing our current lives and thinking of how to make it better are all important exercises, but the traditional way of doing them can be time-consuming, monotonous and boring, making it tempting just to skip them. By integrating such exercises into a game, and making them into fun group activities, these games are providing a new way to practise self-care. Here are a few I recommend:

The best for personal growth: Better Me

This is the first game I played in the genre, and the one that inspired me to write this article. You move around the infinity-symbol shaped path by rolling a dice, and draw a card from the category you land on: Heart, Body, Mind, People. The cards resemble journal prompts, and encourage you to share a meaningful memory, or to commit to making a change in your life. Each player walks away with a sheet of intentions, and an accountability buddy assigned to each intention. A good all round personal growth game, that also starts deep conversations with your friends.

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The Best for Mindfulness: The Mindfulness Game

Draw a card and follow the exercise on it! It offers loads of fun ways to engage in mindfulness, meditation and grounding exercises, basically setting in motion a group therapy session that leaves you feeling calm and connected to those around you. It’s a good way to introduce kids and teenagers to meditation in a fun, easy way.

The best for creativity: Dixit

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Dixit is a joy to play because of the beautiful, whimsical illustrations of its cards. Everyone has cards in their hand, and one player says a word or phrase associated with one card, that they place face down on the table. Other plays also place a card that corresponds to that phrase, then everyone votes on which card they think was the original. It gives you insight into other people’s crazy brains and sets your own imagination in action. I always come out feeling inspired and thoughtful.

The best for spreading love: Totem

This game will have you and your friends and family telling each other those things that you most appreciate about each other. Throughout the game, you build a Totem of qualities representing your personality, using animal cards that represent your strengths and quality cards representing your qualities. Other plays pick which ones are for you and explain why. It’s a nice game to play with kids or teenagers to develop their self-esteem, or with any family members to relieve tension and remember your love for each other.