Life is an Infinite Game… Once You Take the Red Pill

Discover how to take the metaphorical “road less traveled” and break the “bullshit rules” of your culture

What’s funny to me is that life (what is life?) placed us on a giant floating mass in the middle of a black void, at a certain period in time (what even is time?), in a specific environment, with people that we were expected to observe, depend on, and learn from for the first decades of our existence because we were tiny, speechless babies that crapped themselves.

Am I the only one that asks these questions? It ain’t even breakfast time yet, oh well.

Many see life as a simple game, where we just have to “level up”, and by that I mean graduate college, go from paralegal to a hot-shot Harvey Spector type of lawyer, or even pump out that first kid. Once we “level up”, we can move on to the next audacious goal that we have set for ourselves, and climb that rocky mountain to see where it leads us.

But, who defines what the next “level” is? Who tells us that after completing level 4, we are then obliged to engage in the “boss battle” within the game in order to move on?

Life is a game, where we can choose how we play.

So far I’ve established that life is a “game”, but you may be thinking,

“Basketball is a game. There are referees (that mostly accrue f-bombs by players), there are boundaries, there are time-limits, and in the end, there are winners and losers. In games there are big tournaments, overpacked with cheering fans, shiny trophies, oh and don’t forget… cheerleaders doing their thing. My life doesn’t come with a scoreboards, post-game ice baths, or fans tumbling for my autograph, therefore life is not a game”.

As I’ve observed, life is a game. Just not the one that comes to mind at first.

The sports world, as well as other games such as chess, Pokemon Go, or Fortnite, can be seen as limited, or finite games. There is always a beginning, middle, and end. And if your a video game or casino addict, there is an end. I’m no PhD doctor, but apparently fixating our eyeballs into an artificial screen has some like bad health effects. Yeah, it’s a thing. Or dropping cash on a card deck until we can’t pay our house is probably a shitty idea.

You know that guy named Simon Sinek, who has a couple best selling books, and is known for his famous Ted Talk sympathizing with Millennials? I recently read his new book called “The Infinite Game”, and it offered many insights on how leaders and CEO’s can benefit from changing their perspective on how organizations should be run.

But while I read, I realized that his concept of infinite games could not only be applied to a business landscape, but also to personal growth and a metaphor for life. Tony Robbins would be leapfrogging right off his trampoline right now.

So why is life an infinite game? First of all, I’ll define the basic philosophy behind the meaning, and why life is not like finite games.

Infinite games (IG) consist of more than one player, and are usually shaped by leaders with an infinite mindset. There is no end to the game, therefore the only objective is to keep playing. Filled with expansive thinking, infinite games don’t see the objective “winning” or “losing” metrics. Main characteristics of IG’s include:

• Building structures (our bodies in this case) that are strong and healthy enough to stay in the game for long periods.
• Contribute to something bigger than ourselves.
• Expecting surprises, and preparing to be transformed and grow from them.
• The way they are played can be changed at any time. Conventions can be broken.
• Decision are based on what is best for the whole, advancing a vision for the future that benefits everyone.

Finite games (FG) are much more constrained, and filled with selfish thinking. They consist of two or more players that are known, with specific guidelines and rules to be followed. Players in this game tend to have the worldview of:

• Destroying the competition, and being the “best”, which means someone is worst off.
• Disruption is to be feared. Changing the rules is unbearable.
• There are agreed-upon, fixed rules and penalties for those that break them.
• Players invent collective single metrics by which to differentiate who “wins” and who “loses”.
• All decisions are fueled by the question, “What’s best for me”.

In an finite game, the game ends when its time is up and the players live on to play another day. [In an infinite game], it is the game that lives on, and it is the players [us] whose time runs out. -Simon Sinek

*Spoiler: Most people playing life as a Finite Game realize sooner or later that the only game mode there really is, is the Infinite.

Where’s my instruction manual?

(Disclaimer: There isn’t one. Do with that what you will).

It’s easy to get lost in the game, largely because of the vastness and level of randomness that can occur. But once we wake up from the small mind that life is a limited game, then we can begin to curve the rules towards our favor. The luminary of our time, Steve Jobs, was caught mentioning the term “bending reality” in his biography by Walter Isaacson in order to meet unrealistic timelines, push out viral products, and make a lasting impact.

If you’ve seen the Matrix, then you know what I’m talking about. It’s about this normal guy named Neo, who realizes that the life that he was living in was an elaborate hallucination, and he inhabited a dream world. Some rebels entered his dream to tell the poor guy that his human body was actually suffocated in apod somewhere, and the reality he had been living in was a mind prison.

Ouch, talk about a rough Monday morning! Have a coffee, bro.

Neo gets offered two pills by a dude he just met, a red one and a blue one. The only way to see the whole picture and break from the illusion was to take the red pill. This Neo guy didn’t have much going for him, and probably didn’t listen to his parents when they told him not to accept drugs from strangers, so he swallowed the Red thing.

His reality would be transformed forever.

When I’m chilling by myself, I tend to ponder some deep existential questions. I follow rabbit-holes, ask if this is all a simulation (I blame Elon Musk), and wonder what my purpose is on this giant floating ball. Sometimes, I just want to vomit out that red pill, and go back to conforming. But then again, life is more enriching this way.

I used to desperately look for a detailed manual that would tell me how my life should look. The usual get a degree, get a job, stay at the job, nod yes when told to do something, follow the crowd, get a wife, have a nice house, etc. You know how the story goes. Fast forward a bit, and I got tired of limiting my whole life, and for all we know there’s only one (YOLO!… sorry I had to), to a photocopied manual that most people follow.

If we were gifted with a fatter brain than most species, and have the ability to create future scenarios and analyze different paths in our head, then why do we downplay our innate capabilities to create our own reality?

Look, my purpose in writing this in not to turn your brain upside down, and have you seeing ones and zeros on your girlfriend’s boobs. My goal is to allow you to discover a truth, which is that in order to consciously play in the infinite game, we must develop an infinite mindset.

The Red Pill takes you to the Infinite Game

(Quick disclaimer: You don’t actually have to take any pills to play the Infinite Game).

The infinite game is what life is, but until we wake up to the game we are in, then we our blinded from the whole picture. The objective is to patiently, little by little, develop an infinite mindset and train our abilities to “bend” the rules of the game. How do we develop an infinite mindset, you may ask? That’s probably a question to ask Socrates, but as I’m currently on the path to find the answer, I can only offer my insight.

The key word is answer. In order to get answers, we must ask questions, duh!

In order to do this, we’ll start adding some Buddhist monk flare into the equation. I’m not referring to escaping society, shaving our head, and sitting in lotus position until we levitate two inches off the ground. Although, if there’s anyone offering a course on that, call me, like, yesterday.

It’s helpful to uncover what types of questions we need to ask in order to access red pill vision and conquer the infinite game. Well, I’m sorry to say that the explanation isn’t that simple. I’m just a 21 year old fart who just bought his first beer legally. So I’m going to outsource some wisdom to a man named Vishen Lakhiani, author of “The Code of the Extraordinary Mind”.

In this book, he explains that all cultures are infested with Brules, or bullshit rules, that guide our lives unconsciously.

Adopting Brules begins at the early stages in life, and they are mostly passed down to us from our parents, school teachers, politicians, and pretty much anyone with authority over us. We follow these Brules unconsciously to simplify our life, and conform to the standards of those around us. It's nice to follow a herd, just ask the sheep at your local farm.

Programming a lot of Brules into our brain is basically like playing the game of life on easy mode. However, learning to question the Brules can “level up” our awareness of life, and we begin to approach what we’ve called the Infinite Game. DUN DUN DUUN.

Questioning the bullshit rules of the past

Up to now, you might have got an idea of what a Brule is, or I suck at explaining. So let me deconstruct some mainstream Brules that put us in a box (controversial-ness alert!)

Brule #1: You need to crack your back for a company for 40 years of your life, retire, and only then start your passion project of traveling the world or starting your own podcast about fruits.

Um, no. Wake da f*ck up, the economy is changing. Millennials and the future digital generation no longer “vibe” with that mindset. The next generation will change jobs more than they wash their clothes. Which, for me, is like twice a year… oops. And just to sprinkle some stats for my logical, data geeks:

A recent Gallup report on the millennial generation reveals that 21% of millennials say they’ve changed jobs within the past year, which is more than three times the number of non-millennials who report the same.

Knowing this, we can chillax and not stress so much about making our next job decision. We can still put in the time to explore our passion and creative capabilities now, and won’t cry when R2D2 or some robot takes our position at our day job.

Brule #2. Paying thousands of dollars from your parent’s money or getting into debt to receive a paper saying “Yay you’ve participated and didn’t fail” is the ONLY way to secure a meaningful life.

For those of us college students, let’s face it… the education system is a bit outdated. Don’t get me wrong, I love my university, and the wonderful humans and memories that came with it, but it’s just a matter of time until the next Zuckerberg sits in a garage and massively disrupts education.

This brule is a bit sensitive to me because I followed it, and then realized it was a brule afterwards. Still, I have absolute gratitude for my degree and all the knowledge that an institution has given me. But… it’s still a brule. Therefore, to be honest, we can still build amazing lives and make huge impact without that paper of completion. A paper may or may not help us find our calling in life. The point is to think about the reasons and motivations behind our choices.

Let’s play a game. Guess who said the following at the White House:

“Our company, as you know, was founded by a college drop-out,” X told the president of the United States. “So we’ve never really thought that a college degree was the thing that you had to have to do well.

“About half of our U.S. employment last year were people that did not have a four-year degree”

If you guessed… TIM COOK… you are a psychic or something. He’s the dude that replaced the late Mr. Jobs at Apple and oddly looks a lot like him. Candy bar for you.

Again this isn’t a phenomenon, this is a current trend. So, yeah, Brule alert!

(If you want to dive deeper, read this article next).

My prescription for you: Red Pill and a little Brule breaking.

I would love to babble on and on and reveal some Brules that I realized were controlling and limiting the vast possibilities in my life, but this isn’t about me.

My objective was to offer you the proverbial “red pill”.

*IMPORTANT*: In order to break Brules, it’s helpful to investigate the stories of extraordinary people who already did. Think big, like Walt Disney level people.

It’s in our hands to question all the brules, and choose which ones works for us. Remember, not all Brules are bad. Some traditional rules actually help us to be better people. Such as, treat others how you want to be treated.

But the point is to question. Take in what works, throw out what doesn’t. Slowly, our mind will open. We will begin to see opportunities where we didn’t before. The chains that our mind put around our lives will slowly be liberated. Reality expands when you throw away shit you don’t need.

Congratulation Player One. You have unlocked the “Red Pill Upgrade”.

The only way to see the whole picture, as Morpheus said in the Matrix, is to “see it for yourself”.

Will you question, or will you follow?

You have made the first direction towards consciously entering the Infinite Game and creating the life you want.

Best of luck, and may you bend the rules of reality to inspire, educate, and transform the world.

Your friend,

Thanks for reading, I hope I offered helpful insights. Your time is appreciated (:

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