games Archives - The Future Mindset

What To Expect

Today’s article on how playing games can bring out the best in us digs deeper into how playing any kind of game can make our mind more resilient, overcome failure, and help us live a happier life. I will also discuss how video games have impacted my life and how they can impact yours too.

How Playing Games Can Bring Out The Best In Us

I’ve been playing video games since I was 5 years old from the Nintendo 64 to now the PS4. I have spent countless hours in worlds and enjoyed the most amazing stories that greatly excited my mind.

It also helped me relax after a stressful day, unlocked my competitive side when playing online and helped my brain muscle with problem-solving challenges.

People can look at games in a negative light where children don’t get outdoors enough and they say it damages their brains. Of course, this might be true if you spend 16 hours a day, 7 days a week non -stop playing. You could say the same thing about anything if you overdo it.

I believe there are many positives to gaming that maybe the non-gamers don’t realise which will discuss below.

It’s a great outlet and can be beneficial to professionals too. Formula 1 drivers have a game simulator where they test new and existing tracks with real-life accuracy whilst being incredibly real.

The Evolution Of Gaming

The gaming industry will ever evolve with VR now the next big thing.

Over the coming decades as it develops. One day we might have an experience much like the holodeck in Star Trek where we can create a life-like world which we can explore. How amazing would this be for surgeons, engineers or scientist to experiment without harm to others?

The ideas are endless of the benefits the gaming platform could improve the world.

Today we will focus more on the benefits we can experience today.

What Video Games Can Teach Us

How playing games can bring out the best in us — Photo by JESHOOTS.COM on Unsplash

1. Playing Games Teaches You About Failure

Learning how to deal with failure is an important trait to learn. Considering the majority of our life’s consist of failure and mistakes of varying magnitude. When playing video games there is no getting around failing at some point. Especially older games where there is no saving point for long stretches of play.

Imagine spending 30 minutes to only die at the last moment, to then have to start it all again. Now that’s learning to deal with failure painfully.

Learning from failure is crucial to improve and move forward. This lesson can easily transfer to real-life learning. Where you learn you can always try again as long as you learn from your failures.

2. Playing Games Teaches You Strategy

In life or business, you have to develop a strategy or else you will keep going in the wrong direction. Being a good strategist has been important throughout human history. Many great battles have been won or lost based on strategy. Within sport, the mastermind manager winning against all odds to prevail through their strategy is a hallmark of a great manager.

This skill can be learned with strategy games, Minecraft and any RPG when discovering new worlds. Now with multiplayer games, a strategy can go a long way in helping win a FIFA game or on Battlefield making sure you come up with the right strategy to capture the flag.

All these little lessons help your brain to practice coming up with strategies that can help you win. When transferring it into real life this skill can help transform your goal setting and whenever you come against problems you can be in the best place to solve them.

3. Playing Games Teaches You Problem-Solving

Problem-solving is one of the most sought after skills in leadership. Being able to look at a problem and effectively solve it can change everything.

Solving puzzles in games can sometimes be painstaking but the dopamine hit of solving that problem is worth it.

There’s also problem-solving when your up against the final boss in a game where you have to problem solve the best way to kill the boss before it kills you. Has brought out the problem-solving muscle to great effect.

Transferring this into real-life can help you overcome and solve most problems in your life. This skill can be within your subconscious mind waiting to show itself when needed. But its development can definitely be done by solving problems within games.

5. Playing Games Teaches You About Creativity

Playing videos games can definitely help you unlock the creative part of your brain.

Now recently backed by new research has shown when gamers are allowed to explore worlds in any way they want. It created a creativity aspect unique to each user, rather than being instructed to follow a certain path.

With games like The Witcher, Skyrim and MMOGs games. The choice for the gamer to be creative with their own choices, character appearance and who you interact with can lead to a boost in creativity. You can even look behind the scenes and see the creativity it takes to create a game and its story.

Don’t be surprised if you’re working the creative muscle next time you play a game.

6. Playing Games Teaches You Determination

When you fail in life if you don’t have the determination to pick yourself up and carry on, life’s going to keep hitting you with the same problems.

With games, you learn this fast and you have to be determined to persevere, adapt and move forward. I’ve been stuck on certain games for a long period of time, especially when I was young.

Learning to be determined to carry on and prevail.

Has followed into my real life where my determination has helped me overcome many obstacles.

7. Playing Games Teaches You To Focus

Being able to focus is a major part of succeeding at any task. Playing games like Formula 1 you have to focus or when you crash you’re out of the race.

Just like real-life, developing a laser focus allows you to progress within games and especially when online you can really see where your focus level is at.

By playing games, you can greatly improve your focus and understand what it takes to focus on real-life tasks. This has been true when I have to focus on hitting a deadline. The focus level needed is very similar to the one you develop playing video games intensely.

8. Playing Games Teaches You How To Win At Life

One thing games teach you is how to win. Every game you play there’s an outcome of completing a game or winning a duel. Understanding the dynamics that go into this can bring out the winner within you.

Transferring it into real-life you can understand that finding a way to win at everything you do can bring amazing things to your life.

This mentality has helped me greatly to become the person I am today and when I lose focus of this mentality life doesn’t hand me the cards as easily.

It teaches you that you have to go and get it. With action = the results you want.

9. Playing Games Teaches You About Community

Keeping in touch with friends and loved ones can be hard with busy lives and long-distance moves. Playing games together just like sports is a great way to bring people together.

I have countless enjoyable moments playing with and against my uncles. It brings to your attention that having a positive community within your life brings so much happiness that you otherwise might miss out on.

You can even make new friends within the gaming community and develop positive competition with friendly foes.

Overall understanding that community is important more than ever, can be a great boost to mental health.

What Do You Think?

Thank you for reading the article about how playing games can bring out the best in us

Gaming has had a positive impact on my life and now it’s the most consumed media on the planet where it has become a billion if not a trillion-dollar industry.

Looking back at a PS1 console or an Xbox and being shocked at the graphics and gameplay we once thought was the most amazing thing ever. We will do the same with what we are using now no doubt.

Gaming no matter how far into the future will help us in some way.

Subconsciously you will be developing skills under the radar that you will use and develop in your real life. If you can be conscious about your experiences with games and what they teach you. It can really open your mind to understanding and developing yourself too.

So pick up your control pad and get gaming!!

IF YOU LOVED THE ARTICLE PLEASE SHARE BELOW!

Hi, I’m Adam

I’ve spent over 10 years coaching and mentoring people within sport and business. I have many life skills that I have developed and I want to pass these skills on so people can find their best self. I believe it all starts in the mind and I write about valuable tools and strategies to help people grow in this area.

https://thefuturemindset.com/about-2/

What To Expect

Within today’s article why treating life like a game is important for the mind. We will understand why being focused is a great strategy for happiness and how treating life like a game can change your mindset towards life. I love sport and games and they’ve helped shape the person I am today. I hope this can guide you too.

Treat Life Like A Game, Serious vs Focussed

Life can be challenging at the best of times when we’re trying to progress. What makes life even more challenging is when we treat life too seriously. Being too serious can lead to a closed mindset. Where you have tunnel vision and can lead to a whole lot of stress. Which can have long-lasting problems on the mind and your overall health.

I’ve been there myself where I took everything super seriously and it annoyed me, even more, when people were succeeding and were not serious at all. When I was serious I didn’t laugh much, wasn’t overly happy and felt serious pressure to perform.

At the time I had a lot of pressure with finances and the expecting of a newborn. Then it came to a point where my manager had to sit me down and told me that you are way too serious and performance needs to improved to be able to continue here.

This was a big wake up call and ultimately this seriousness had to change for my job and my overall mental health. Luckily I was in my early 20s so I had time to change.

Imagine playing sports or video games being too serious It becomes unenjoyable. That’s why it’s important to loosen up and don’t take everything overly serious. What I changed with my approach was instead of being serious I became focused instead.

The Power Of Focus

I focused on having more fun at work, building relationships, learning new skills. I even focused on playing the game of what the business expected me to do. That’s where everything changed. It moved my mind and energy into alignment. Success shortly followed and the new way of being focused allowed me to change my life.

So If you find yourself becoming too serious. Instead, opt for the approach of being focused and plan what you want to focus on to succeed. Just like a video game where you have to focus on completing each level.

Life’s Goal Is To Have Fun With What Your Doing

Imagine looking back on your life and regret that you didn’t have any fun or experienced the things you wanted to. This would be a terrible feeling.

That’s why with the approach of treating life as a game. The intention should be to succeed in whatever game your playing but ultimately enjoy the process and have fun.

That’s why whatever you do within your life whether that be travelling, raising children or trying to progress within your job. Treat it like a game where you have to pass a serious of different tasks to level up or move on to the next level of the game.

This process has made raising my children more enjoyable. Instead of getting caught up in all the negative aspects of parenting. Instead, I look at what their age group requires and go to town in helping them achieve every milestone they need and focus on making it fun and rewarding.

You can even do this with languages, after watching a Johnny Harris Youtube video on learning languages. How he approached learning a new language was level 1 learn 1000 most common words within that language and then once completed move on to the next level to speak it and so on.

This not only makes learning fun but also allows us like a game to pass the level and move on. If you are a person who enjoys perfectionism you can even enjoy learning and perfecting each level of life to its maximum before progressing to the next stage.

For example, if your learning to drive instead of doing what it takes to pass you could do everything possible while learning to gain maximum points to pass your driving test.

Whatever floats your boat but ultimately making it enjoyable for you to move forward.

Why Treating Life Like A Game Is Important For The Mind

Of course, enjoyment is important depending on what game we play. What’s more important is the positive effects it has on the mind. When we are happy with how our life is going our mental health is greatly improved.

The power that sports, video games, board games and anything where a game mentality is used. Dramatically boost the mind and the overall positive feeling we have.

If we apply this strategy to a generic task that normally brings no enjoyment it can transform life into one of enjoyment instead of a life of dread. This can be as easy as timing yourself how fast you can tidy your home or competing with your partner who can iron all the clothes the neatest.

Within any game, there is a form of competition either with others or yourself. When we compete it naturally brings out a different side of us and as long as it’s controlled. It can be an amazing tool to use to create enjoyment in generic tasks of life.

Over To You

I hope you enjoyed today’s article about why treating life like a game is important for the mind.

When we take ourselves and life too seriously. Life becomes hard and unenjoyable. But if we take the approach of being focussed instead, it allows our minds to open up to new possibilities.

Then take the foundations of what games can give us and apply the strategy of completing a game with real-life situations. It becomes a game-changer in progressing while having fun.

If you’re into video games I hope this resonates with you and the understanding of mixing the two worlds together. If video games not your thing then sports, board games and expeditions can relate well to this too.

Take your life and mental strength to the next level by making life the game you’ve always wanted.

IF THINK SOMEONE COULD BENEFIT FROM THIS ARTICLE PLEASE SHARE BELOW!

Hi I’m Adam

https://thefuturemindset.com/about-2/