Games & Activities

52 cards to prompt journalling; helping us to better understand ourselves and our priorities

Journaling is one of the most effective ways to regain direction and calm: but what we should ideally be journaling about isn’t always clear.

This set of prompt cards directs us to some of the most fruitful topics for reflection and self-exploration. Use them as you journal to find inspiration and encouragement. Each of the prompts engages the mind in some of the things that matter most and helps us to better understand ourselves and our priorities.

The prompts tackle key topics around relationships, careers, emotions and ambitions. They invite us to go on new journeys within ourselves that will leave us more joyful, self-aware and serene.

Instructions

• Flip through the cards when the urge to journal strikes.
• Stop where it feels relevant; and let the prompt guide you towards new insights and awareness.
• Write as much or as little as feels relevant.
• Repeat regularly.
• Alternatively, use the cards to inspire reflections that don’t get written down. You might even use them in a discussion with a friend.

60 cards for understanding how we feel

It can sometimes be very hard to know – let alone tell others – what we actually feel. This is a product to help us begin this therapeutic journey.

Each card puts a finger on an emotion that we might be experiencing without being able to pin it down exactly. The cards range in themes from the happy to the sad, the agitated to the serene. The backs of the cards are beautifully illustrated by artist Helen Cann, and can be arranged into a mindful map of emotions.

Use with a friend, a partner, a therapist, a child or a parent – in any situation where we want to sift through a range of emotional options in order to define what is truly coursing through us. With charm and ease, we become clearer to ourselves – and a lot more understandable and open to others.

A set of 52 question cards to spark insightful and playful encounters 

Great dates are made up of great conversations: ones where we find out more about one another, discover what makes us both tick, share some of what we like and reveal how we see the world. 

This is a collection of cards that can be used on a date to help provoke the best kinds of discussion. This pack includes 52 cards, each one posing an intriguing question or setting a challenge, designed to provoke, entertain and stimulate. As a bonus, the cards are graded according to how probing they are (Easy, Medium and Hard) so that you can playfully match the discussion with the flow of an evening.

A strong relationship is not the product of magic or luck. It grows through the small, repeated acts of honesty, vulnerability and humour we are brave enough to share with one another. Yet even the most loving couples can struggle to begin these important conversations. We are blocked by shyness, resentment or the sheer unfamiliarity of putting certain thoughts into words. The Couple’s Dice is a tool to help partners connect. It gently encourages us to say things we long to express but too often repress. Each of the six sides prompts one kind of communication we regularly neglect or avoid. Together, these six prompts open the door to tenderness, catharsis, laughter and deeper trust. Along the way, the game may also reveal truths we hadn’t fully understood ourselves before – unspoken desires, quiet disappointments or forgotten hopes – giving us the chance to grow not only closer to our partner, but also more in touch with who we are.

A good life is the result of good decisions. However, we seldom accord the business of decision-making the careful attention it requires. When faced with a major decision, we lack rituals and procedures. We typically procrastinate, lean on the nearest person or rush headlong into an unexamined solution. Fortunately, decision-making is a skill that can be learnt. The chief enemy of wise decision-making is a lack of sufficient perspectives on a problem. The Decision Dice invites us to think through an issue from twelve distinct angles: Enemy, Gut, Death, Caution, Courage, Parent, Friend, Eternity, Child, Success, Billionaire and WTF. As we try out, juggle with and then synthesise these perspectives, our sense of possibility will expand, and a tolerable way forward will gradually emerge from our present confusion.

52 cards to complete the story in our minds

Here is a set of cards that offer us an entertaining and unique way to learn about what’s really going on in our minds.

Each card presents the beginnings of a story and invites us to imagine the rest. What might happen to the little boy and girl lost in the forest, or the couple on the day after their wedding? The prompts range from whimsical openings inspired by classic tales, to more grounded, psychologically challenging scenarios.

How we complete these stories reveals a remarkable amount about our values, fears, concerns and hopes. It is up to us whether we answer playfully or therapeutically, as long as it is honestly. Play the game in company for entertainment and confession; play it alone to mine the contents of your deep self.

From The School of Life— a card set for working out what you really want

From The School of Life comes an ingenious tool – based the psychological research of Hermann Ebbinghaus – for working out what you really think and want. 

This set is made up of 52 cards, each of which features a different unfinished sentence (for example, “Men are …” “I want …” or “What I really need is …”). Complete them as fast as possible, without censoring whatever comes into your mind, to discover what you really feel, fear, want, regret, or are angry about. The broad variety of topics and open-ended nature of the prompts allows honest insights to be drawn about a range of areas of our lives, such as friendships, relationships, work, and wants. 

With the potential to be as serious as you make them, they are ideal as conversation starters for group discussion, alone for therapeutic insight, or simply as a fun mode of self-discovery.

Use these cards repeatedly to nurture a newfound sense of self-understanding and clarity.

A Tool to Explain Our Moods

It can be hard to tell other people how we really feel—sometimes it’s hard for us to even identify our own moods.

This is a tool to help us overcome our vagueness: cards that offer definitions of twenty moods that we can all recognize but that can be hard to pin down and explain. Here are descriptions of - among many other things - the sense of feeling weepy, nostalgic, anxious, and dreamy. These cards help us reach a clearer understanding of our inner emotional weather. They can also be passed on to friends and colleagues (or simply displayed on our desk) so that the world can better know what's going on inside us, without our needing to explain too much.

Also includes a fun, spinnable (and colorful) mood barometer.

52 conversation cards to help break the log-jam between parents and their teenager

Not many teenagers want to talk to their parents that much. Their reasons are numerous and often sensible; yet for parents, the silence can feel painful and mysterious. What happened to their once chatty little ones? What might teenagers truly want to tell their parents, if only there was the right opportunity? And what might parents want to tell their children in turn, if it didn’t generate an immediate eye-roll? This is a pack of cards that can help the conversation and levity between generations with humor and curiosity.