If you imagine yourself like a videogame character you control, you can achieve anything in life.
“How to find happiness despite the suffering of life?”
“How to change your life to meet your expectations?”
“How to develop a resilient mindset to the shit life is constantly throwing?”
These are the questions I constantly get from you guys.
And a while ago I came across an idea from the great Tej Dosa on Twitter, which reshaped my entire thought of myself. He calls it the God consciousness, (more of which you can learn here) but I like a different metaphor.
How I go through life, and how I deal with adversity or bad feelings?
With the Videogame Mindset.
Life is like a videogame
If you think about it, life is actually quite close to a First-Person videogame.
Or to be precise, videogames are designed around life.
They have to be. Because the people who made them do live this life.
Most stories in said games are usually an experience someone had, amplified, or put into another scenario.
Especially first-person games.
You know the type where you see through the eyes of the hero, or the main character.
They are placed in a world, where everything is shit. And they need to fight battles, overcome hurdles and obstacles. Maximize and learn new skills, and then come out a winner in the end.
And get the princess.
The classic hero story.
Why not make you the hero of your story?
How life is close to gaming
I always loved to use this one quote.
“Life is like a videogame. You know you’re on the right path when you encounter enemies.”
Remember when you played games and decided to fuck around a little bit, the story just stopped. When you were doing pointless stuff for fun, life didn’t proceed.
Only when you went back on your mission, your purpose, your goals, then the storyline proceeded.
When you actually faced the enemies you had to face.
Beat them and learned new skills.
Only then did life proceed to cover new heights.
Well, the actual real-life is not much different.
You don’t run around with a rocket-launcher and blow people to smithereens. But when you’re fucking around, without a purpose, no goal, and not overcoming your issues, your life will not proceed.
It’s actually worse in real-life, because time keeps moving.
So you fall behind.
Whereas in a game, you can always reload.
There is no respawn in real-life. (Except for buddhists, but they start at Level 1 again…, or do we all respawn?)
How does the videogame mindset help my happiness?
From now on, imagine your physical body as a videogame character. And your consciousness is you sitting at the keyboard or controller.
You don’t need a real body on that keyboard.
It’s just your consciousness.
Be completely immersed in the videogame, but control that character you’re playing.
Are you ever afraid to talk to people with that character? No, right?
They’re all NPC’s anyway. (Which, ironically enough, is close to reality).
Are you afraid to start something new? To not go out and don’t do things that might help your character achieve? No, you’re not.
Quite the opposite. You’re eager to start new quests. Get new missions, find ways to proceed and finally win!
Are you just sitting around, not doing anything? Wasting time (on watching porn)? Rarely, right?
Sometimes you fuck around, and it’s fun. But most of the time, you want to develop your character. Level him up! Make him better, stronger, faster.
Do you care about his feelings very much? No.
You see them, you think about them, but you end up doing what you have to do anyway.
Be it sadness. Pain (to some degree), tiredness, or lack of motivation.
You go out and do it anyway.
Now imagine you would be playing the character who is currently reading these words.
And now think about how different your life could be if you thought of him as a videogame character controlled by you.
And doing all of these things above?
How to create impenetrable calmness?
This gives yourself a certain calmness. A form of indifference.
And from my personal experience, this is great.
I am not afraid of being rejected. From a woman, or business partners, potential clients. These feelings are the feelings of my character.
They don’t bother me at the keyboard.
I see these feelings. I even feel them, since I am directly connected with him. But that doesn’t mean I act upon them.
Everything that life throws at me is a challenge.
A test.
I need to level up my character to succeed with the current quest.
You’re heavily in debt? There is your sidestory quest.
Getting out of it as soon as possible.
You’re not rich yet? This is a main-story quest.
Set the foundations with your actions.
Your woman is acting up. This is either a sidequest to get her back on her knees, or a mainquest to find a new one.
Whatever.
It doesn’t bother me. Because I am just enjoying this life by literally PLAYING it.
Playing to win the quests and level up!
Videogames are made by stoics
You may have read up on stoicism. And I mentioned this before.
The stoics were always confused with the cynics.
Cynics care about nothing and everything is shit anyway, they just aren’t bothered with it.
Like a dead log.
The stoics on the other hand just decided to not be phased by bad things. But they still enjoyed the good moments.
This is much closer to playing videogames than you think.
Since I incorporated this mindset I noticed a lot of parallels with stoicism.
- Outcome independence
- Happiness despite adversity
- Industriousness despite lack of motivation
So maybe videogames and the videogame mindset are just a new-age versions of stoicism.
Either way, it works.
Playing videogames for success
If you want to be successful in life, you need to challenge yourself constantly.
You need to actively seek adversity.
But you are probably afraid of that, aren’t you?
Public speaking! Embarrassing!
Even though it could yield massive success, riches, and freedom if you became a famous public speaker.
Play it like a game.
You just control that character. Detach from the emotion of fear.
It’s all in the characters’ head. Not in yours.
With this mindset, you are much more likely to actively take risks, engage in uncomfortable situations, and overcome your fears.
And in turn, you will be much more successful.
You will embrace uncertainty.
Because this is what life is. A collection of uncertain moments.
If you are afraid of that, you will always live in fear.
But if you learn to enjoy it, because it means you can level up your character. Your life suddenly becomes fun and exciting.
How to have an easy life
Also act like you are playing life on easy mode.
You know how games have different difficulty modes?
I always played on easy. I don’t care what you think of it. I was there to have fun, man!
Imagine you play life on easy mode as well.
EVERYTHING you come across. Imagine it is fucking easy.
If your mind thinks it is difficult, then it WILL be difficult. If it thinks, it is easy, then it WILL be easy. Because your mind will already come up with solutions to your characters’ issues.
This might sound weird, but this is how it works.
It will take effort to convince your mind that things are easy. But you can do it.
And you will see great results.
Play life on easy mode.
Because, it actually is truly easy.
How to change your life by implementing the videogame mindset in your daily routine
Now you know about this mindset. But this will be gone tomorrow.
That’s why you need to constantly remind yourself of it.
Check out this mindfulness bell app:
Android: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=net.langhoangal.chuongchanhniem&hl=gsw
Apple: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/mindfulness-bell/id380816407
Set it to 30 minutes in the beginning (and hourly later).
Everytime it rings, remind yourself consciously that you are controlling that videogame character.
Also, whenever fear or an uncomfortable feeling sets in, try to think of the videogame character and act like you are controlling one.
This will take effort in the beginning, but will become second nature quickly.
On top of that, in the morning and the evening, take out 5-10 minutes and visualize yourself controlling your body like in a videogame.
Visualize certain situations. Positive ones, where you succeed with something and your character levels up.
Visualization is important to trench your subconscious with your new self.
Do this for a month, and you should already see BIG changes.
Trust me, this will change your life on a scale you cannot imagine yet.
And once you finally internalized it, and accepted that this IS how life works, your questions will start to change.
“Who is this consciousness controlling this character?”
“WHAT am I then?”
“Do I really exist? And where?”
But these questions are for another time.
Meanwhile, build the videogame mindset and make it INDOMITABLE and POWERFUL by checking this out here.
Live prosper!
Alexander
