How to Be More Successful in 2014
Over the past few years, I've been
playing this really cool game. Everybody playing this game starts with a
character that's assigned a random number of abilities (physical strength, creativity, etc.) and amount of
resources (money, equipment, time, etc.).
As
the game proceeds, you can gamble resources to gain more abilities or gamble
your abilities to obtain more resources. You can also trade resources with
other players which is a gamble to get more resources. (Sometimes it
works, sometimes it doesn't.)
The
game is called "Life" and I don't mean the one where you run a little
plastic car around a board. When it comes to success (either at work or at life in
general), there are several advantages to thinking of your life as a game:
First, realizing that your genes and
your family connections (i.e. resources) were random keeps you from thinking
that they make you "superior" to the other people playing the game.
As a result, people are more likely to want to work with, or for, you.
The perspective that there's
randomness involved also keeps you from grousing because were given less
resources than somebody else. You start focusing on playing with the
resources you've got rather than focusing on what other people got.
Second, thinking of your life as a
game keeps you from taking it too seriously. Yes, there will be ups and downs,
which will be big or small, depending upon how you risk your resources and your
time.
However, realizing that life is just
a game allows you to experience those ups and downs with a sense of
perspective. Because it's only a game, so you're freer to shrug off the downs
and use the highs to your advantage.
Finally, gamifying your life helps
you understand that the winner isn't the guy who dies with the most toys (i.e.
his time ran out), but rather the person who manages to extract as much
enjoyment as possible from playing the game.
For almost everybody, that enjoyment
will come primarily from helping other people rather than helping yourself. You
see, life isn't a "zero sum" game where the number of winners is
proportional to the number of losers.
Quite the
contrary. In the game of life, winners (people who enjoy life) create more
winners. That's why the game is so cool.
BY Geoffrey James http://www.inc.com/geoffrey-james/dec-20-success-tip-how-to-win-the-game.html?cid=em01016week52a
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