Hi there everyone!!
Sometimes life feels just like a video game -- being in the midst of a foreign universe with unending tasks and challenges, surprises and defeats.
The analogy goes a lot deeper. Here are seven life lessons we can become more conscious of, winning the game of life.
1. We get what we get
As in many video games, we choose attributes of our character, weapons/spells and weaknesses. So too, in life, we get what we get (perhaps what we chose before being born). To constantly wish for powers we do not have or pretend negative aspects of our self are not really there, makes for more frustrating game play.
Instead of asking “how did I end up here?”, consider what you can do by being here now.
2. The different levels…
There are all sorts of stages in life. Every time we feel we have a phase in our life mastered, the phase changes to a new, more challenging phase of our life. That’s the nature of the game. It would be boring if it was the same difficulty level all the time.
We never know what future levels will look like or what they might hold for us. But the anticipation of new game variables can be a powerful motivator to do well in our current level.
3. Whammies!
All good games have hidden surprises, and so does life. We are going to get hit with things out of left field now and again. It’s almost better to expect these wildcards. They will make life seem unfair and unjust. They are just variables in the game.
It’s challenging to predict whammies because they are designed to take us off guard. The best thing to do is to accept them when they happen, and embrace them as part of our game.
4. The Bonus Round
There are good surprises too. We’ll find rewards, inventory, and other tools to serve us as we continue our journey. It can take many stages for us to find a bonus round, but when they come, they are awesome!! It’s feeling the ease and joy of life that we all deserve.
It can be nice to bask in the abundance of a bonus round. But good players will teach us that we may want to put some of our excess into reserve, for upcoming challenges ahead...
5. Is there really choice?
While we do have a control panel that obviously has power over our immediate environment, can we alter the nature of the game? All the images, sounds, locations, and people were actually all pre-programmed. We can move our character, but each of the possibilities of what will happen when we move our character a particular way, have all been predetermined.
Some say we’re bound by physics, institutions, infrastructure, and technology. Maybe those are the fixed variables of our game and we really can’t “change the world”.
6. No restarting
When learning a new game, it’s easy to keep restarting it from the beginning, especially if we get to a difficult part. However, a savvy player will play each game until the very end, because that experience will gain them much more ability in future games. In fact, we’re not really playing a game, if we’re not completing the game.
Frustration, doubt, and regret are great sensory experiences in this new age reality. But giving up, quitting, and suicide, are all symptoms of a bad player and a bad sport.
7. Game over, man.
It’s fascinating how many books have been written on what will happen after this game, what happened before this game, and what this game really means. There are more people debating this then there are those enjoying the game itself. Shouldn’t there be more books written on how to play this game, enjoy this game, and share this game?
When a game is over, does it even matter who won, what levels were achieved, or that we got ourselves on the leader board? The most important question to ask, probably is “Did you enjoy playing the game?”
Is Life a New Age Video Game?!?
This is not the truth. It’s an analogy that you can try on and see if it empowers you. If it does, share it. Here are some of my favorite game instructions for challenging times from Bon Jovi:
Just breathe
There's nowhere else tonight we should be
We should be
You wanna make a memory?
You wanna steal a piece of time?
You can sing the melody to me
And I can write a couple lines
Let’s love the world together...
Love,
[)anish /|hmed, blind visionary
