If we were having coffee, I would be telling you the things I learned about life from playing Candy Crush.

I deleted Candy Crush from my tablet a few weeks ago. It’s a life-sucker. I replaced it with the YOU app, which gives me something healthy, beautiful and life enhancing to do every day. That means I get my online kicks from sharing that I did 10 squats, or tidying a drawer in the kitchen, or enjoying a moment of peace. Much better than the thrill I got from swiping shiny, pretty coloured shapes around a screen.

I did learn some useful lessons from Candy Crush, along the way, as it were, and I’m going to share them with you today, my friends. That means you will never have to play it yourself. Thank me later.

1. You can get a buzz of achievement from something that’s essentially meaningless. That applies to many things in life: Likes and Shares; buying a new pair of shoes or a recipe book full of beautiful pictures of beautiful people living a beautiful lifestyle. Those things aren’t going to make you any happier long term.
2. You can do things for a long time, and feel you’re pretty good at them, and still mess up. And that doesn’t mean you’re a failure, or bad at what you do. It just means you messed up.
3. There are no second chances. If you swiped the blue one left instead of right,there is no “undo” button. You are stuck with that choice. Think carefully. But be aware of number 2.
4. The candies never fall the same way twice. Actually, statistically, they probably do. I can’t imagine the number of possible variations on a grid, but in theory, you could get the same one twice. And on another planet far, far away, there is another you sitting reading these words, who will go on to win the local lottery,and have 4 beautiful children who never use foul language, and celebrate their birthday by driving their brand new sports car into a swimming pool of champagne – but that’s not going to do you much good, right here, right now.
5. Just because something is pretty and shiny and a bit addictive, doesn’t mean it’s good for you. In fact, I would suggest looking carefully at things that are pretty and shiny and a bit addictive, because, chances are, they are not good for you.
6. Other people will use up your bonus help things much more quickly than you will. Just saying.
7. When your kids complain about you spending too much time on line, you neeed to take a long, hard look at yourself.

There you go. That’s what I learned. So now  you don’t need to download it. You can spend 5 minutes reading this and then go and do something more interesting instead.

I did this for you. Because I care about you. Now go and make real candies, or go for a run, or read a book, or write a poem – something that will give you a real buzz of achievement in this beautiful real world of ours.