Level Up!! Welcome to the stage of life

You love video games. Come on, admit it. No matter what your age, or cultural background, or how bad your fine motor skills are, you love video games. Even if you’re a dinosaur, you know you will ask your 5-year child or grandchild, who is just moving on from the intermediate level to the expert level of handling technological devices, to teach you how to use a smartphone, just so that you can begin playing that game you saw someone on the metro play.

Just like everything in life, video games have evolved in leaps and bounds. Most of us today are exposed to ultra-realistic graphics, to the extent that it becomes difficult to tell the difference between video game characters and actors and sports personalities on screen. I remember playing NBA2K a few years ago when my uncle walked into the room and asked “Who is playing today?”, and I replied “Your 15-year old son and I. The loser has to have his nose and tongue pierced. I’m 20 points up”.

The first video game of ‘noughts and crosses’ by Nimrod in the early fifties to the latest obsessions like NBA, FIFA, God of War, Call of Duty, Spider-Man, and my favourite MLB: The Show, among many others (No, Fruit Ninja isn’t a game. It’s just a way for you to put as many smudge marks on your phone screen in as many places as possible), have kept our competitive spirits on the rise while keeping us thoroughly entertained. We can continue playing through the weekend, even the whole week without a bathroom break because we’re engaged, our adrenaline is high, and we want to come out on top and won’t settle for anything less. As we say, ‘we’re zoned in, we’re in the game’.

And then reality strikes, life arrives, and our heroic ‘never say die’ versions start feeling weak, despondent, and willingly lay down our arms at the first sight of adversity. Worse still, we resort to inaction because we anticipate that what might happen next will be an event that will be too difficult to deal with. We fear the unknown, perhaps because we almost always believe it may not be good.

We have all the possible excuses to remain stagnant. “I can’t resign from my miserable job, because the next one could be even worse”. “I can’t ask this question in class, what will others think?” “I won’t do well in my presentation as I suck at public speaking, I may as well not prepare” “I’ve been told I’m a good dancer, but what if I freeze on stage?” “I can’t marry him, the in-laws are part of the package (Okay, I admit this fear is valid)”. “What if the police find out? (Don’t get any ideas, I’m just making sure you’re paying attention here)” “What if I sound childish?” “What if I hurt someone?” and the list goes on.

Do we ever hear ourselves saying “Damn, level 6 on Mario is likely to be really hard, let me just play level 5 for a year or two”? or “I’ve been stabbed 57 times at this very stage of Assassin’s Creed, I’m done playing this game”? or even “This level is so comfortable and easy, let me just stay here forever” NO. We come back with a steelier resolve and intend to improve our performance with every single attempt. And we do this till we achieve that goal, and celebrate in euphoric fashion, compelling the old neighbor lady to think that someone in our house is getting assaulted (See, now you don’t care if the police find out).

For those that have seen the movie ‘3 Idiots’, Dr. Sahastrabuddhe says “Life is a race”. I believe life is a game and the only race run in it, is between you reaching your true potential and the time you have on this planet (or the moon, or Mars, or elsewhere if you’re young enough to see our species spread our presence) to achieve this.

We take absolute joy in playing video games and importantly no one has to ever convince us to do so, at any time of the day or night. We are ready to be entertained but also bring our ‘game face’ (pun intended) to the occasion. We play with belief, we fail at various levels but dust ourselves off and have a go again, but critically, we enjoy every moment of frustration and excellence alike. We were not born to excel at any of these games, but yet out of sheer belief, commitment, perseverance, and practice, we succeed and move on to higher levels. We tell ourselves it’s just a game and yet we play it like our lives depend on it.

Bring this joyous and spirited attitude to your lives and treat it like a game, where your goal is to master one level and move onto the next. Once you activate this mindset, it won’t matter what anyone thinks, or if you’re good at public events, or the consequences of taking action, oh that’s right, the in-laws are still a problem (but you’ll figure it out, won’t you?).

I’ve heard Robin Sharma say that you need to make your ‘I can’ greater than your ‘IQ’. Your attitude is greater than your ability. As long as you bring your strong positive attitude and mindset to every single day of your life, you will lose the fear of failure. And that is a key element to success.

So, I’ve decided to shed my fear of sharing my writing for others to see and just try to do it one level at a time. Welcome to the next level!!