What Super Mario Taught Me About Being Superhuman

Unique life lessons from an unlikely hero

A little more persistence, a little more effort, and what seemed hopeless failure may turn to glorious success. — Elbert Hubbard

This might sound a bit absurd, but one of the biggest heroes in my life is a fictitious video game character.

Unlike other heroes, he does not wear a cape, he does not have a consistent superpower, and he does not have any special tools, other than his trusty plumbing wrench.

What he does have is persistence, effort, grit, and determination. What he faces is a mighty journey through unexpected challenges, extraordinary circumstances, and a series of stubborn roadblocks that he must learn to overcome in order to reach his ultimate destination.

That surprisingly influential hero is Super Mario.

Super Mario is a simple man who faces each obstacle with the willingness to fail, knowing that if he does, he will learn and improve so that he doesn’t make the same mistake too often. Mario routinely suffers defeat at the hands of many enigmatic characters, yet he accepts his beating with pride, picking himself up each time with the willingness to take on the same challenge repeatedly with new knowledge of how to succeed.

Mario is the ultimate Super Hero in a land of many, and what he has to teach is more important than any.

It’s been many years since I’ve blown the dust off a Super Mario World cartridge and slid that purple power button into illusion, but I’m finally starting to see the lessons that the creators of Mario were trying to teach.

I’m not talking about the lessons you find when you skip a level because you located a secret tunnel somewhere hidden in the Mushroom Kingdom. I’m talking about the metaphorical life lessons hidden throughout the storyline of every world Mario conquers, like the power of companionship he finds in his relationship with Yoshi or the impassioned pursuit of love he embodies in the race to save Princess Peach.

As a kid of the 90’s I look back with fond memories, yet I can’t help but wish I knew at the time how transformational that decade was going to be on the world. While I was learning the macarena, slamming Pogs, and pleading with my parents to buy me a Panasonic Shockwave Discman, the Worldwide Web was taking hold and society-shaping companies like Google and Amazon were being created.

These were the golden years of the Information Age and I was busy traversing the Forest of Illusion with my trusted sidekick Luigi, eating mushrooms, and throwing turtle shells.

All is not lost, however, because the lessons I learned from those mind-bending, eye-melting hours of transcending into the TV screen have now come full circle, and while I can’t say I ever tamed the Bowser beast, I did gain some very unusual, yet oddly critical knowledge that helps me navigate life today.

The Superior Life Lessons of Super Mario

Life is a game of ascension that comes with an awesome delete feature.

Like any Super Mario game out there, the goal is to move through levels fighting defenders until you reach your final destination. Life is just the same although sometimes we forget we’re playing. Humans are amazing because we have this incredible cognitive ability to understand that we exist on this planet for a specific reason and we build our lives around it. Sometimes that reason conditions us to think we “need this” and we “have to have that” in order to be something more and we become programmed from the outside (society, friends, bosses, parents, etc.) Once we realize that the things we accumulate and the pressure we consume from others is apart of the game that we can delete, we can ascend much quicker to that final loving endpoint and give that Princess a big ol’ smooch.

Live presently and learn from the past in order to maintain forward momentum.

Whether it’s a firey tunnel flower or a level castle boss, Mario is constantly running up against challenges that he has to learn to overcome on his journey to save the Princess. In our world we have similar battles, however, we have three psychological lenses or states that we can choose to view life from:

• Lens 1: ‘That, there, then’ (past state)
• Lens 2: ‘This, here, now’ (present state)
• Lens 3: ‘What, where, when’ (future state).

You’ve heard this many times before, “live in the present moment”, or “be here now”. These are poetic phrases to try to get someone out of a past or future state of thinking and while sometimes that type of message might not be helpful, it is truly the only way to come at life, for all we have is the present moment.

You see, the past and the future only exist in our lives as a thought. When we’re thinking about the past, we’re doing it right now, when we’re thinking about the future, we’re doing it right now, therefore, even while we’re stressing over what happened three months ago, or anxiously awaiting what is going to happen three years from now, we are doing it RIGHT NOW. So why don’t we give more credit to what is here in the present moment? Isn’t that where everything is happening anyway?

It’s time we give up the past “that sucked” attitude and the false future “what if” belief and find a way to be with what is here right now.

Like Mario, we have to move out of the ‘that, there, then’ with an understanding of what serves us in the ‘this, here, now’, while maintaining confidence that whatever obstacles we run up against in the ‘what, where, when’, will be met with the skills and abilities to overcome.

Collecting the most amount of coins and getting the highest score is not how you beat the game.

As a kid, with Super Mario, we bragged to our friends about our high score. We didn’t tell them we beat Bowser and got the affection from the Princess we’ve been longing for.

We do this as adults too.

We’ve been convinced to believe that we need to have that cookie-cutter suburban home, identical to the 50 others on the street, so we don’t stand out too much, but ensure that we’ve got enough so that we can do our part to keep up with the Joneses. This misrepresentation of success keeps us from going after the unique passions that inspire us. It teaches us to focus on building a stockpile of coins so that we can try to beat our neighbor's high score.

That’s not how we beat the game. In our world, as with Super Mario, you lose your life when you become too greedy chasing that extra coin.

Money is important, don’t get me wrong, but there are other things to chase in life that will lead to so much more. Following a purposeful mission, giving back to those in need and loving without condition are more fulfilling ways to succeed.

What we’ve been told about love is wrong. Chase it with everything you have because it is worth everything you’ve got.

In Super Mario, as in life, love is the ultimate goal.

We are all searching for it, we are all chasing it, we all run into obstacles along the way to finding it, but the point is that once you do, all the hard work pays off and you live on in freedom, knowing that nothing can ever stop you.

The Princess that Mario is chasing might be a metaphor for true love from another, or it could be a love we have to find in ourselves, but in our own unique ways love will need to be rescued and we’ll have to find a way to rise to the occasion with chivalry to overcome the demons and bravely unlock that door to freedom that allows us to feel what it truly means to beat the game, what it truly means to be in love.

Powering Down

As we reflect one last time on Mario’s metaphorically heroic adventure from blue-collar determination to beautiful loving bliss, we can see that, just like that mustache-wearing plumber, each of one us has the power to overcome any obstacle in our way, be our own hero and become superhuman.

It’s up to you how you spend the life you have left in this beautiful game, but my hope for you is that you get the chance to feel the supportive guidance from a caring friend like Luigi, experience the powerful sense of trust in a confidant like Yoshi and collide face first with everlasting love like Mario as he reunites with the divine Princess Peach.

Good luck!

This post is part of my $100,000 journey into re-building my mind, body, and inner-self through a series of uncommon experiences that completely transformed my life. Head over here to view more.

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