Minesweeper. Most people know the game. It has been pre-programmed into computers for at least 15 years along with solitaire and the calculator. As a child on my grandmother’s computer, I would open it when I was particularly bored, click randomly, and try not to get blown up too quickly. I did not know what the numbers in the boxes meant and it did not occur to me to stop and think about them logically. I invariably blew my games to smithereens. Minesweeper frustrated me to the point that I would rather pretend to type properly or redo games on children’s sites than look at its smug smiley-face button.

(The smiley-face has since been dispensed with. I can only imagine it is because countless people shared my pain.)

A few years ago, in an attempt to do anything but a paper, I sat down and googled how to play. (It comes with instructions, but I am a visual learner.) Turns out, the numbers are the key to avoiding the bombs (surprise!). Each boxed number represents the amount of bombs touching it. So, if the number is “one” and you deduce which box around it has the bomb, then no other box touching it has a bomb and you can safely click on all of them. This is the only way of deciphering where they are—unless you’re particularly good at patterns and codes and have a lot of time on your hands.

Still, the first click, and any other click into uncharted boxes, is dangerous. You could lose before you even have the chance to uncover a number, but if you never take the risk, you will never win the game.

It is my opinion that everyone with access to Minesweeper should learn to play it, because it contains excellent life lessons. Think about it. When you do something new or explore a new opportunity, it’s like clicking that first box. It can be scary. You don’t know what’s going to happen. The attempt could yield marvelous results by clearing away most of the board/your obstacles and pave the way to your success. Or, you could immediately land on a bomb and the game/experience/opportunity could end.

Is it worth it? Well, if you never venture to click on a box in a new field, you will never uncover a number. You will never know how far you could have gotten. The same goes for real life. If you never try to do that scary thing, you will never know if you could have succeeded.

Also as in life, the bigger the board, the harder it is to find the boxes that clear away large sections of danger-zone. Therefore, the bigger the opportunity in life, the more risks you have to take to be successful. The dangers and the potential losses are bigger, but so are the rewards. If you are not willing to take the big risks, you may miss out on the big rewards. This game teaches you to think in terms of which risks are most beneficial to take.

While it is true that there is no real way of predicting where the bombs will be, outside of pattern and code analysis, if you've been playing a board for a while you can get a sense of how clotted the bombs are and where they like to hang out (on the edges, in the middle, in the corners). This helps you decide where to click when you finally have to do so randomly. You may still lose, but the probability of winning is higher. Thus, the game teaches you to think based on analysis of which risks yield the highest probability of success. This can help you navigate real opportunities in life.

(In my personal experience, I have had board clearing clicks more often than I have had bombs. And, even if you do lose the game, you almost always have the opportunity to play again—with a different set of variables.)

Minesweeper also teaches you to carefully think out your decisions before you make them by tricking you into thinking that the games always follow a particular pattern. If you follow the patterns and get foolhardy, you may not notice when they are broken. Likewise, if you do not stop to question your decisions, it is probable that you will choose the wrong box and lose the game. When this happens to me, I usually realize that the correct answer was right in front of me in plain English. Had I stopped for ten seconds to think about the variables, I would not have lost.

Life is like that. If you do not take the time to think about which opportunity you should pursue, you may end up regretting your choice.

So the next time you have the opportunity to take a risk or make a scary, potentially life changing decision, think about it like Minesweeper. Do you have any experience with the situation? Have you taken a class that has made the first click for you? Analyze the risks and the rewards as well as how to take every advantage presented to you. In other words, figure it out and do it.