The Greatest Game You Could Ever Play
You are the main character
One day you woke up and you were here. You then started taking things in, touching, tasting, seeing; building an existential connection with the world. You learned to walk, talk, and read; you gained a basic understanding of numeracy and literacy.
This is like level 1 when you first get into a game. You’re learning the controls: left, right, press x to jump, press triangle to slide. You also learn how things work in the game and where things are (gauging the map).
In most games you get to choose which character to start with, unfortunately, in real life, we aren’t given that same courtesy. We’re born with certain genetics that is going to somewhat limit the scope of what’s possible for us. But just like the characters we chose in a game, although each has its preset abilities, you can still level up.
Training Mode
In a video game, there’s normally a section where you can Practice. It could be shooting practice, fighting practice, or football practice — like you get on FIFA. This is similar to school (how school should be at least). School should prepare you for the world. You get to explore different subjects, try out different sports, interact with different people, and gauge what path you might want to take when you enter the ‘real world’ of adulthood.
This is where you find out your strengths and weaknesses. In training mode you get to try different moves, you learn what you’re best at, and get to choose what you want to focus on more. All of this is preparing you for story mode.
Story Mode
As you go through school, you ‘should’ have gathered enough knowledge and experience to have some kind of idea of the path you want to take in life: do you want to be a doctor, lawyer, or athlete?
Maybe you want to live a different type of life altogether and become a digital nomad, traveling the world? Maybe a pirate (yes, I’m pretty sure they still exist), a Buddhist monk, or perhaps you want to spend your time researching insects.
In most games, there are usually a few different paths your character can take, but life has an almost endless number of possible paths in a multiplicity of domains.
Of course, you don’t always have to go into story mode. You can explore the map territory without any particular goal in mind, raiding, drinking, partying etc. But this type of aimless, meaningless exploration of the game without any direction or story to partake in typically gets quite boring. Most gamers tend not to play for too long like this.
Story mode is very important because when you pick a great one, the game is thrilling. This is where you see people glued to their screens for days, sometimes weeks on end.
Each story mode will have unique structures, with different missions, different upgrade packs, and different maps.
For example, if you decided to pick Lawyer Story Mode, you’d have to go through law school, find a firm, and ascend through the ranks to eventually make it as a partner. Or perhaps you are in it because you want to make a change in the system and help support wrongly accused victims. Perhaps you want to specialize in providing support for certain sectors of society. Either way, each one comes with a different set of missions that you’ll need to complete to achieve what you want.
Maybe you decide to choose Athlete Story Mode, where the goal is to eventually become the number one athlete in the world. You’ll have to spend a lot of time training, but also, you’ll have to go through different missions than the lawyer: world tournaments, sports press conferences, mountain running etc.
Certain story modes have more difficult challenges than others. But, this also depends on the character you’re playing with. You’ve played those games that are so difficult to complete with weak characters or second–rate weapons, but when you get an overpowered character it becomes easy.
If you play FIFA with PSG or Bayern Munich, it’s easy to score goals and win games. It’s easier to complete levels in a shooting game when you have all the best weapons and armor. In the same way, it’s easier when playing an athlete if you have the natural talent of Usain bolt. It’s easier playing the financial consultant when you have a high IQ and an aptitude for numbers.
Upgrade
Granted, some people are lucky and get to start with stronger characters that have high-level stats from the start — they might be born with better genetics. But, just like in the game, you can accumulate upgrades as you go along.
If you spend a lot of time in the game training, collecting coins, and exploring different parts of the map, you can start to upgrade your player. Regardless of your genetics you can still learn, read, train, earn money and do things to upgrade yourself beyond someone who just started with more.
Ultimately, although your starting point does to a degree determine the scope of what you can do, the things you do in the game are way more important in determining how successful you are.
Upgrading your player in a game is fun, but upgrading yourself in real life is even more fun. Unfortunately, it often takes a bad situation to force us to upgrade.
Stuck on level …..
Have you ever reached a level in a game that seemed impossible? You try again and again but just can’t seem to crack it. Maybe it’s the whole level you struggle with, but often it’s a specific part.
After a while of repeated failure people normally do one or more of the following.
- Look for cheat codes — I hope this isn’t you.
- Analyze the game and its previous actions. This involves thinking about the different levels and moves they’ve been making to figure out where they’re going wrong.
- Find help. This could be either from a friend, a mentor, google, or youtube; If you go on youtube, you’ll find that some of the highest-rated videos are gamers who’ve streamed themselves playing.
What happens when you’re stuck in life? Can’t lose weight, can’t increase your wealth, can’t pass that exam no matter how many times you try.
Of course, you can cheat, maybe that involves taking steroids or having some kind of fat removal surgery. Maybe it involves stealing or cheating on a test.
Just like the gamer, you miss out on what life has to offer when you cheat, you don’t get to learn and improve.
You also miss out on that feeling of joy, fulfillment, and accomplishment that comes with overcoming obstacles.
On the other hand, when you figure out how to do something that you previously couldn’t, you gain something that you didn’t have before. In the act of figuring the problem out, you have to add something to yourself; a new skill or knowledge, that allows you to overcome the obstacle. The amazing thing is, you get to keep this new ability, you get to utilize it in the future.
This is obviously better than cheating, but it can take an unnecessarily long time. Granted, because of our uniqueness, there are some things in life we will have to figure out ourselves. But most of the time, going to seek help is the best option. No need to reinvent the wheel. 99% (I’m guessing) of the time there are other people who have already done what we’re trying to do. This means, seeking mentors, reading books, or watching videos on whatever it is you’re stuck on will massively reduce the learning curve.
Take Inventory of Yourself
In every game, you’re able to see your character’s stats: strength, speed, power accuracy …… You need to know what your character’s strengths and weaknesses are so that you know what they can and can’t do. This will help you make better decisions about what to do with them in the game. Having these stats also lets you know which areas you need to work on, what skills you need to level up so you can be successful.
It’s the same in real life, for example, let’s say you want to build a successful business. You’re creative and intelligent, but you’re bad at planning and organizing. By taking proper inventory of yourself, you’ll know which areas you need to work on, which books you need to buy, and which mentors you need to reach out to.
You’ll also know what type of business is going to be best suited for you, what practices you need to engage in to compensate for your weaknesses: this could mean taking courses to upskill yourself, or working with a business partner that has strengths in the areas you’re lacking.
This doesn’t mean you have to choose options that are suited to your strengths (although that’s usually your best bet). If you do choose something that isn’t suited to your strengths, at least you have a clear picture of what you’re going to need to do to reach your goal when you take inventory of yourself.
Imagine playing a game where you had no visibility of the stats for any of your characters. Even if you could get a general sense of their strengths and weaknesses while playing with them, it would be difficult to navigate the game. It would be difficult to gauge how much you’re improving and whether or not you’re ready for particular levels.
It can be useful to write down your strengths and weaknesses with a numerical number assigned to each one that you can adjust as you progress (or regress) through life.
Just like the characters you play within a game, having this visual representation is going to help you get your bearings and understand where you are in a more specific and tangible sense. This will give you a better idea of how far off you are from the goal and what you’ll need to do to get there.
Of course, the stats you assign yourself aren’t going to be perfectly accurate, and they’ll be subject to bias, but accuracy isn’t the point here. The point is to have a more tangible and effective process for tracking your progress.
This will also give you a different perspective on yourself. You can start viewing yourself as the main character in a video game.
This can add some more excitement to your life and the idea of self-improvement. Rather than going to watch crap TV or playing video games when you’re bored, looking for an escape; you might just decide to turn to the most diverse, complex, and interesting game that you have: Your own life, your own path, you’re own journey.
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