What I Learned About Winning From a Cutthroat Game of Sorry

I’m not much of a winner. At least when it comes to things like card games, contests, or croquet. 

My competitive spirit doesn’t get riled up by something that comes in a box, is meant to be entertaining, and has no significant impact on my life.

But there is one exception. 

Have you ever played Sorry? I’m obsessed. The version that lives at my mom’s house looks like it was printed in the late 1970s and the box is about two insincere sorrys away from disintegrating into a cloud of dust. It started coming out at family holidays a few years ago, and it’s become one of my favorite things about Christmas.

Sorry is fun because there are strategies to employ, but it’s mostly luck. You can be three moves away from winning and get sent right back to the beginning. You can be top dog and land abruptly back to the bottom. It’s exhilarating. 

This Christmas, we played three games of Sorry. I lost the first game and got mad. Since games don’t tend to register very high on my “This Matters”-o-meter, this was a weird moment for me.

As we set up for the second game, I decided to win.

Suddenly, winning was my destiny. I was calm, focused, and ready to dominate.

When my brother sent me back to the beginning, even though it would have been better for him to kick off someone else’s piece, I didn’t get mad again. I just calmly thought, “That’s okay, I’m going to win.” 

When I went from almost winning to behind every other player, I thought, “That’s okay, I’m going to win.” 

“That’s okay, I’m going to win” was my only strategy.

Guess what? I won. And then I won again. 

It was deeply life affirming.

Here’s what I didn’t do: 

I didn’t give up or change my end goal, even when it looked like I had no chance of triumph. 

My mom decide she couldn’t win when the board got stacked against her. So she changed her aim from winning to getting two pieces to the end. She got those two pieces home, but didn’t win. By adjusting her end game, she got what she said she wanted but didn’t win.

My brother got annoyed when his strategies didn’t work, and gave up. I get it, I tend to do that a lot in life, but it’s definitely not going to get you very far.

I also didn’t try to micromanage the game. I didn’t think things like, “I’m going to roll a ten to get ahead.” Or “I’m going to take my brother down, because his strategy bit me in the butt.” I just repeated my internal mantra of - you guessed it - “That’s okay, I’m going to win.” 

By remaining calm and focused, I had fun and I won. Twice.

Afterward, when I shared my strategy, Brandon said, “Now you just need to do that in life.” 

Haha sigh.

It’s definitely easier to stay focused during a 45-minute board game than it is for the seasons, years, decades it takes to bring big dreams to fruition.

It’s easier to float in zen-like detachment when it comes to a board game with nothing at stake than it is when it come to money or relationships or other things it feels like your happiness and security rely on.

But ultimately, our emotions aren’t the determining factor of what we receive or accomplish. It’s our focus.

So how do I take my Christmas board game wins and apply this lesson to the other things in my life?

How do we stay focused yet unattached to the outcome when it comes to things we really want?

My suspicion is that the secret is to have fun in the process. If I had won the game but had a lousy time it wouldn’t have been worth it. The only way to accomplish big things is to sustain focus - and, for me, the best way to do that is make sure I’m having plenty of fun while doing what it takes to get where I want to go.

One of my big goals in 2026 is making sure I’m having fun doing the things that are important to me. Creating ways to have fun while writing my books and running my intuitive business. Carving out time during the week to do things like roller-skate and go to the movie theater and see friends.

Because struggling through and giving up when it gets hard is no fun at all.

With love,

Amber

How To Determine If You’re a Specific or a Nonspecific Manifester

For a long time, I thought manifestation was bullshit.

It felt like the harder I tried, the less it worked.

Here’s what I was missing: an accurate understanding of how manifestation works for me.

We each have our own unique manifestation style, guided in large part by whether we’re a Specific or Nonspecific Manifester.

I was trying to manifest specific goals. But when I started getting obsessed with Human Design and learned that I’m a Nonspecific Manifester, my creation process began to make more sense.

If manifestation never seems to work for you, this may be why:

You’re a nonspecific manifester in a world built for specific manifesters. 

You thrive on vibes not logic.

You’re meant to zigzag toward joy instead of chaining yourself to your to-do list.

The more you focus on the outcome, the more frustrated you become.

The more you lean into how you want to feel, moment by moment, day by day, the more the universe rearranges reality in your favor.

Most of the manifestation information out there is geared toward specific manifesters. So if it feels like it never works, it’s not your fault. You’re just built differently.

Here’s How to Find out if You’re a specific or Nonspecific Manifester:

According to Human Design, we all have our own unique manifestation style. Knowing if you’re a Specific or a Nonspecific Manifester shows you how to best set goals and use your unique energy in manifestation. Your designation is based on your manifestation arrow, the bottom right arrow on your Human Design chart.

Step 1: Get Your Human Design Chart

You’ll need your exact birth date, time, and place.

You can generate a free chart here.

Step 2: Find the Bottom Right Arrow

Look for the four arrows around your head in the chart. They correspond to different aspects of awareness and manifestation. The bottom right arrow indicates your manifestation style.

Step 3: Check the Direction of the Bottom Right Arrow

If it points left, you’re a Specific Manifester.

Meaning, you manifest best when you’re clear and detailed about what you want. Focusing on details will help you receive and create what you want.

If it points right, you’re a Nonspecific Manifester.

Meaning, you manifest best when you focus on the feeling, essence, or vibe of what you want. Stay open to how it comes - and the universe fills in the details.

an easy way to remember the manifestation types:

Specific manifestation is a golden retriever.

You can train it to obey you. You still want to provide a healthy environment, but in general, the golden retriever will go where you tell it to go. 

Nonspecific manifestation is a slightly feral cat.

If you’ve ever met a cat, you know you can’t force it to do anything. All you can do is provide a safe environment and let the cat go where it wants, when it wants. The more you try to herd the cat, the more frustrated you’ll become. 

Most of the manifestation advice floating around on social media and bookshelves is designed for Specific Manifesters, the people who can slam their wizard staff to the ground and proclaim “I will create $10,000 this week.” And then they do it and get to feel smug. 

But for Nonspecific Manifesters, the more we aim for outcome, the more we cling to the end goal, the more aggressively we fail. As a Nonspecific Manifester, you’re meant to focus on how you want to feel. 

If you’ve ever tried to follow someone else’s plan to get something, and it feels like that never works…you’re probably a Nonspecific Manifester. You’re meant to skip steps. Where a Specific Manifester can follow a designated path from point A to Z, you probably need to zig zag. Veer off course because it feels fun. Go rollerskating instead of sticking to your to-do list for the day, because that’s how you stay in the frequency of the result you’re calling in. 

Specific manifesters get to feel super smug when they set and strategically reach that one million dollar goal. 

Nonspecific manifesters also get to feel smug, but they can’t cling to the end result. They have to bask in the vibes of how they want to feel and trust the universe to rearrange things in their favor, and not get discouraged when it comes in a different way before it shows up in the way they hoped for. 

Nonspecific bonus: roller skating instead of to do lists. Zigzagging toward joy instead of sticking to a plan. 

Love, Amber

P.S. If you want to go even deeper and learn about how you can apply these principles more powerfully in your own life, we talk about Specific and Nonspecific Manifestation in more depth in Magic Money Potion, so if you’re interested in more, join Cash Activator to get access. For more support, come to one of the group coaching sessions and I’d be happy to help you out with applying this in your own life.

Like a Hero

Today was meant to be my triumphant return to dance class.

I’ve always loved dancing - I danced in my teens, twenties, and thirties. But somewhere in between the pandemic, adrenal burnout, and peri-menopause, I hit a snag. So I’ve been working with a trainer for months to get strong enough to go back to dance class, after six years off.*

*This is what they mean when they say “use it or lose it”. When I was younger, no matter how out of shape I let myself get, all I had to do was sweat and suffer through the first few dance classes and I was fine. Now, in my late 40s, I had to train for months before I could even SET FOOT in a dance class.

Today was going to be the day.

I woke up this morning, my body said YES LET’S DO THIS THING and I got in my car at 7:50 am so I could waltz into the 9 am modern-yoga hybrid class that I use to love. My plan was to waltz out again and head to work feeling delightfully smug about my accomplished goal.

Alas.

Anyone who’s ever tried to commute anywhere in the San Francisco Bay Area knows the pain of this next anecdote:

I stupidly believed google maps.

It said it would only take me an hour to get there. Like a naive rube who got here yesterday, I left with an hour and ten minutes, figuring I’d have just enough time to pay and dash into the bathroom before class started.

Instead, the drive took an hour and twenty minutes. About halfway through, my body stopped saying HELLZ YESS LET’S GO DANCE and started saying GET ME TO A PLACE WHERE I CAN PEE. NOW.

So instead of dance class, I went to McDonald’s for a bacon, egg, and cheese biscuit (and their bathroom). Like a hero.

Instead of dance class, fast food. Instead of smugness, a general sense of rue and disbelief that I let myself be duped by Bay Area traffic. Again.

I will try again on Thursday morning. I will leave at 7:30 am. Like a hero.

Why Can't I Walk?

… Without Resembling a Rum-Addled Pirate Who lost Her Peg Leg somewhere.

At least once a day, I take a step and the entire right side of my body buckles. My hip and knee give out and I stumble like toddler learning to how to use the stairs.

Is this what being 46 is about? Wonky joints and never being guaranteed you’ll walk in a straight line?

For awhile I blamed the floor of our house. We live in an epic fixer-upper that continues not getting fixed. (Probably because the first thing that needs to happen is replacing the foundation. The estimate was $400,000 in 2016 dollars. So now, in post-Pandemic, current-tariff inflation, that would be what? A million dollars?)

The floor slants, is my point. A lot. If you drop an orange in the kitchen, it will roll into the living room. You may never see that orange again.

We had circus performers for Brandon’s 50th (as you do) and the fire show in the courtyard went without a visible hitch, but the poor dude performing on his circle thing-y in our wildly slanted living room couldn’t keep the wheel going to save his life. We just watched his ego sink into the core of the earth as he kept toppling and having to re-start when the floor didn’t behave as expected. In retrospect, we should’ve warned him.

Unfortunately, my unreliable right hip and knee don’t seem to be location specific. They just merrily collapse on me no matter where I am.

Because I like walking and want to do some of the things my former self enjoyed, like dance classes and maybe running (maybe), I am doing my utmost to sort out this issue.

There’s a theory that our body absorbs the impact of our poor* decisions.

*More accurately, our misaligned decisions. The decision itself was probably neutral but it may not have worked for us at the time. And the body says “aw HELL no.” And then I guess you stop being able to walk like a normal person?

Meaning, my movement issue - like so many issues - has multiple prongs: learning the internal mechanism to making the best decisions for myself in each moment as well as strengthening my body so it can do normal body things without all the drama.

A combination of physical therapy and going to the chiropractor a few times a week fixed it for awhile, but then I made the mistake of thinking it was fixed and stopped doing what were apparently the only things keeping the right side of my body from wobbling like an air sock outside a car dealership.

After I doubled down on my bad decisions by deciding to go for a run (despite the fact that the physical therapist said very specifically “no running”) and thereby messing up my knee (which swelled up like a balloon, that doesn’t seem right), I am now in a bit of a perambulatory pickle.

It’s amazing how much work it takes simply to regain the use of my legs, limbs that used to do their job without all the melodrama. I’m doing my daily physical therapy exercises again with a few additional mea culpas. I’m seeing a trainer, because it has been solemnly sworn to me that they can get me dancing again in a few months.

I’m also crossing my fingers that all this works, because I really want to start dancing again. Also, I enjoy, you know, WALKING.

I miss the days when being out of shape meant suffering through a few dance classes and then being fine. Now, it takes months of work to even be able to consider setting foot in a dance class.

If you’re wondering how all this happened - I mean, I’m not that old - I suspect the combination of the pandemic plus perimenopause massively screwed me over. Some people got in great shape during the pandemic. Others, like myself, simply shaped their couch cushions into something that better cradled their butts. I also watched every single thing my TV had to offer, a decision I regret zero. Add that to majorly spiking cortisol (thanks, hormones) and some wild stress, and my adrenals were toasted like a marshmallow dropped in a campfire. It took two years of no exercise (and lots of other things) to address the burnout. Unfortunately, in the process of healing my adrenals, all my muscles atrophied.

So now I sway down the street like a pirate with a peg leg and no parrot. (I should really get a parrot.)

But because I’m stubborn, and willing to do the work (especially when I know what the work is, which isn’t always the case when you’re trying to fix something), I plan to be in dance classes by the summer.

SO MOTE IT BE.

Why You're So Tired Right Now

Today the answer is actually not because the world is a trash fire of existential despair.

Today’s answer is: Blame the moon.

That’s right, it’s the balsamic moon again!

I shout about the balsamic moon from the rooftops because if you’ve been pushing too hard or overdoing it in any way, the balsamic moon is when you’ll feel it.

You’ll be exhausted and have no idea why. The siren call of the nap will become impossible to ignore. You’ll trigger more easily. You will want to do zero things. You will politely request the entire world to come to a halt so you can climb into bed for three days.

If you haven’t been overdoing it over the past month, you might not feel it. Or just decide your bedtime is half an hour earlier than usual and call it a moon cycle.

But for those of us recovering perfectionists who are healing the hustle mentality and trying to exorcise the demon capitalism from our bodies?

We gonna wanna nap.

For years, I would crash face first into my couch for about three days every month and I couldn’t for the life of me figure out why. It didn’t seem to have anything to do with what was happening in my life or my own cycle. But when I started paying attention to the moon, I received my witch bonus: Getting to schedule the balsamic moon into my calendar so I wouldn’t accidentally plan anything that requires leaving the house.

So if you’ve been pushing yourself over the last month, you’re burning out (or already on fire), or have extra stresses in your life right now, this might be the moment when you crash. So give yourself the space and grace to take the rest as it comes.

If you’re doing fine, thanks, just take this as a moment to bank a bit of extra sleep.

Are you feeling it this month? Or are you good?

Tell me!

💛 Amber

P.S. I’m okay so far. I took a brief lunchtime nap and felt like the grocery store might do me in, but I’m not catatonic. 👍🏻

P.P.S. The balsamic moon is the three to four days before the new moon. It’s a time to rest, release, and open up to new visions. But mostly rest.