Read This If You Want To Level Up

When people say life is like a video game, despite it being true, It still doesn’t sit right with me. 

And that’s because the sentence should be the other way round, video games are like real life. Because we created them, and well, that’s the whole point in them.

Despite this, thinking about the similarities between our lives and that of video game characters is still amusing and yet simultaneously disturbing. 

Now, I could quite easily write a whole blog about how some people are living their lives on autopilot, just like that of an NPC (The programmed non-player characters that just roam around) 

But this is instead for those who want to level up, as it were.

XP - Experience

In video games, there is often a progress bar at the top of your screen, constantly reminding you of where you are and how far you need to go. 

This progress bar also exists in real life, we just can’t see it. 

We gain experience by doing anything new, a new job, speaking to someone new, doing a new exercise, going somewhere new, the list is endless. 

Every time we do something we have not yet done, we gain a little more XP. 

More experience leads to new skills, more confidence and more opportunities.

In real life, experience might be the most valued asset, especially in the workplace.

As the saying goes, when the person with money and the person with experience meet, the one with the experience usually ends up with the money and the one with money gets the experience. 

Once we gain enough experience with where we currently are, eventually it leads us to…

Level up

With enough experience in a video game, you move onto the next level.

Life is the same way, again, we might not be able to see what level we are on, it’s an invisible metric, but we all have an estimated sense of what level we, and the people around us are currently on. 

With each new level comes a completely new set of challenges, each new level is more difficult than the last, but don’t forget, you are now better equipped to deal with them…you have more XP.

Along with your levels, your skills and standards have risen too.

In a video game, you might be driving a stolen car on the way to deliver drugs to the cartel, take a wrong turn and crash, mission over. But you get another go.

This time, you’ll avoid ever taking that turn again, but this time, you’ll face a different problem.

Lucky for you, no matter how many times you die and fail the mission in the game, you get to keep trying until you successfully complete it.

But guess what, life is the same way, you might not be trying to drop off drugs to the cartel, and you might not have the ability to re-spawn but I'd also guess that that’s not the mission you’re trying to complete (I hope).

You’re more likely trying to complete something a lot more manageable and less dangerous, which means that you don’t get to die and re-spawn as you wish, you do however get to keep taking the wrong turn and keep trying until you eventually succeed.

This leads me onto the next problem.

Emotions 

As you’re not actually a video game character, you’re blessed and cursed with the emotions you feel that can stand in your way. 

To gain experience, to level up, to keep retrying the same goal over and over, come with the unfortunate reality that they make you feel things.

To try something new comes with fear and anxiety, to keep retrying until you eventually succeed comes with needing mental resilience. 

You're burdened with caring what other people might think, you're tied down by worry and the discomfort of being different.

But let’s be real, if you didn’t feel anything, what would you do? What could you do? 

Don’t forget, there was once a time riding a bike was scary, learning to drive a car was scary, talking to strangers was scary.

If you do anything enough times, it stops being uncomfortable. Nothing meaningful comes from staying within your comfort zone. 

So, if life is like a video game, then..

“You might as well play the most magnificent game you can. Because do you have anything better to do?” - Dr Jordan B. Peterson.