How to Turn Health and Well-Being into Joyful Games

Keeping up the healthy habits by turning them into fun games

The inaccuracy of the word habit

Self-Gamification (= the art of turning life into fun games by tapping into the synergy of anthropology, kaizen, and gamification) is perfect for developing healthy habits. Although the word “habit” is probably a bit misleading.

The primary definition of the word “habit” by Oxford dictionaries is:

“A settled or regular tendency or practice, especially one that is hard to give up.” — Lexico (Oxford Dictionaries)

From experience, I can tell you that a healthy habit is easy to give up. Especially if we resist and resent it.

Getting enough sleep

Let’s take having enough sleep, for example. I often found myself resisting going to bed at a reasonable time because I thought I didn’t want the day to end. There were so many fun (or even not so fun but still necessary) things to do! I also feared what the next day might bring.

I am sure there were other good reasons my mind came up with then too, which I don’t remember now. The fact is, I went to bed too late while still having to get up early in the mornings. I did that every night for many years, with just the occasional long sleep in-between (due to exhaustion).

I tried giving myself points for enough sleep, and it did work for some time. But gathering one point for so many hours of sleep wasn’t that appealing to my insatiable mind. (Credits for the expression “insatiable mind”: Ariel & Shya Kane)

And as soon as I took the activity off my game plans in the hope that it would happen all by itself, I started getting less and less sleep again.

Another “failed” healthy habit

The same happened with the straight posture activity, about which I told about in this story:

Soon after I stopped treating it as a game and earning my points each day, I found myself with back bent and shoulders hunched more and more often. Tensions in both my back and shoulder muscles returned, and my husband started straightening my back with his lovely hugs again, more and more often.

As much as I loved my husband hugging me, I didn’t like the fact that my healthy back straightening habit had disappeared.

“Failed” healthy habit number 3: Movement and work-out

Another example was with work-out and daily movement. I tried jogging once a week and had a lot of fun going on weekly runs with my children. We managed this for a couple of weeks before the weather changed, or so I claimed, and we stopped. My children continued getting exercise at school, kindergarten, and through the sports they were practicing. But I didn’t.

The wake-up call

I resented my apparent inability to take care of myself and labeled myself as hopeless in this area of my life. But then, after overdoing things, I had two incredibly painful diaphragm spasms in the space of one week, between Christmas and New Year’s Eve 2018. It was a wake-up call. I knew I had to come up with some game “hack” to keep up the healthy habit of moving and working out.

I had to do it not just for my body as a whole but in particular, my eyes. I have a condition responsible for my eyes’ inability to move completely synchronously, which makes wearing glasses (for my shortsightedness), playing video games, watching movies, following the text when scrolling on my phone, and other similar activities uncomfortable and tiring.

I was aware of the necessity to do something for my health and well-being. But even doing the necessary exercises for just a few seconds or minutes a day wouldn’t last for long if I trusted they were already habits that would be done regardless.

What to do?

From habits to games

The solution was to put enough sleep, straight posture, and both work-outs (for eyes and body) into my daily games. Now, if I sleep for more than seven hours a day, I get stars or self-drawn donuts, and I get more self-drawn rewards if I do both workouts and practice straight posture every day.

I must tell you that I am very diligent in earning my scribbled rewards now. I am quite proud of rarely sleeping less than seven hours a night and now love the yoga, pain-relief, and other work-out sessions I previously thought I hated, and I look forward to practicing them every day.

Making habits intentional by playing them as games

Having learned from experience, I am keeping everything I want to do for my health and well-being as daily games, even if at some point they seem hard to give up.

Thus, Self-Gamification can help you make healthy habits intentional and support you in keeping them up and appreciating everything you do for your well-being. By gathering points, stars, and badges for what you want to keep up, you will strengthen what you want to cultivate in yourself and stop worrying about what you don’t like about yourself, without noticeable effort.

Thank you for reading!

This article is a slightly modified excerpt from the Self-Gamification Happiness Formula: How to Turn Your Life into Fun Games.

Thank you for reading!

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