When I started minimal changes I started with the tag line use what you have, do what you can. It’s an approach as I applied minimalist lifestyle principles to areas of my life where I am overwhelmed. I’ve time I’ve learned a learning principle from Tim Ferriss called Transfer and Encoding.

Transfer means principles are transferable. There are principles that make you good at a specific skills, that when applied to a different skill will cause a similar level of success. An example is that you can apply the law of the seed, planting 10 seeds will improve your chances to grow a plant, in sales is also transferable to sales because you need your offer to more people to make more money.

Encoding, means learning the skill in terms of what you already know got me thinking about things I’ve already mastered.

When I started sales and working for businesses, I learned how useless most of my skills are and I spent most of my time playing computer games and learning martial arts. Everything I learned as a kid was absolutely rubbish so I went to work learning a new skill set. I learned sales, money management, tech skills, people skills and so on from books and people I found successful.

Eventually I realized that a lot of my skills were useful after all. Two years ago, I got really depressed at the lack of progress I had with my goals. I didn’t learn and invest in stocks as a kid nor bought and sold shit to make money and that’s why I’m learning those things just now. I was depressed for three years and one of the things I did to cope was to learn about contentment.

Be happy with what you have while pursuing what you want. - Jim Rohn

I’ve been a gamer for the most of my life, I started my interest in martial arts playing Mortal Kombat and Tekken. I learned to plan effectively playing the sims and Starcraft, Diablo 2 and Warcraft 3. I have no idea how valuable the skills I mastered in real life.

Through the most part we encounter inspirational and motivational quotes to remind us what to do or what we can do in difficult situations. Once we’re in front of difficult situations, we are confused, we panic, we forget that we can. I know because I’m there. It doesn’t matter how many Jim Rohn, John Maxwell, Brian Tracy, Stephen Covey books I’ve read. In a real fight, I forget what would Bruce Lee or Steven Segal do.

When you play a game, if your life bar goes down you’re dead. Literally or you have to play again and start over.

How does it (difficult situation) hurt your (lifebar, finances, productivity, etc)?

Once you identify what hurts then next question is.

How do you make it not hurt you? Do you dodge left? Parry low? Block or do a counter attack? It works in a game. It works in real life.

I made a list of all the situations where I end up spending money. So what I did was I linked my finances to a game I played (Diablo 2, Warcraft 3). My money allows me to do things important. Misuse of my money will leave me unable to do things when I need it. My money is like a lifebar that I’m trying to fill. I do the same with other activities that I’m working on. I look at situations where I make the error in spending money and I do my best to remember not to spend it when unnecessary and to spend it when it is.

You study it’s attack pattern and act appropriately.

What do I do? I’m stuck because, the boss is hard to kill. In a game most bosses are hard to kill. In real life, breakthroughs are hard to achieve. In games, you either hit it harder or hit it more times. After taking enough hits the boss will die. In increased difficulty like nightmare, hell, legendary or extreme levels the same principle applies. You know what’s interesting, so does in real life. What does the situation require of you? What attack causes the most damage to the boss? Fire, Lightning, Physical, Cold, Magic, whatever? Use that! Use more of that. Same thing in real life.

This is boring, should I quit now?

There will be a grind.  Sometimes you’re dodging Diablo’s red lightning attack, sometimes you’re looking for Khalim’s bodyparts while chasing after, and getting stabbed by scalpels and blowdarts by the tiny flayer people in Act 3. Sometimes it’s boring but it’s fine. Every game has dull moments.

How do high level players do it? Learn from them. There is no FAQ or walkthrough for real life. The Bible is the closest I found so far although I’m having trouble learning the sequence on how to read it like a gamer would. So far I see it as a move and combo list I’ll eventually learn it. It’s okay that you don’t understand everything as a whole, learn what you need for your level. Once you overcome that difficult situation there’s more to face later when you’re done.

Face your difficult situations. The only way to overcome a difficult game is to finish it.

 

2012-09-18 19.53.12

 

 

 

I finished Diablo 2 Hell Difficulty as a Hardcore character (I didn’t die once) with a level 86 Necromancer. This pic is from the time I beat nightmare difficulty( I couldn’t find the one where I got the title Guardian). I named my character Misfortune because I want a name that would make the army of darkness feel how unlucky they are for being on the opposing side.


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