No object, no event, no outcome or life circumstance can deliver real happiness to us. We have to make our own happiness – by working hard at activities that provide their own reward.15.
Scientists have demonstrated that dramatic, positive changes can occur in our lives as a direct result of facing an extreme challenge – whether it’s coping with a serious illness, daring to quit smoking, or dealing with depression. Researchers call this ‘post-traumatic growth.’
I didn’t accomplish what I set out to do, but I realized I had set out to do the wrong things.
When we play games, our brains respond differently to stress and obstacles. We’re better able to control our attention and ignore distractions.
Reality is broken. Game designers can fix it.
When we play a game, we tackle tough challenges with more creativity, more determination, more optimism, and we’re more likely to reach out to others for help.
Gamers always believe that an epic win is possible and that it’s always worth trying and trying now.
Every game we play activates our brain, and it’s the same brain we have in real life as we have in the game.
It may have once been true that computer games encouraged us to interact more with machines than with each other. But if you still think of gamers as loners, then you’re not playing games.
There is no problem that doesn’t have some underlying need for more optimism, stamina, resilience and collaboration. And games are, I believe, the best platform we have for providing that.
The idea of the ‘lone gamer’ is really not true anymore. Up to 65 percent of gaming now is social, played either online or in the same room with people we know in real life.
We have to accept as a society that games are not escapist. They really do change us.
Compared with games, reality is disconnected.
Game developers know that people have more fun when they’re in large groups. They feel more fired up when the challenges are more epic.
You can’t play the same game every day for years. New games are key.
My goal for the next decade is to try to make it as easy to save the world in real life as it is to save the world in online games.
What’s really amazing about games is how they change our emotional response to challenges.
When we’re in game worlds, we become the best version of ourselves, the most likely to help at a moment’s notice, the most likely to stick with a problem as long at it takes, to get up after failure and try again.
Urgent optimism is the desire to act immediately to tackle an obstacle, combined with the belief that we have a reasonable hope of success.