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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!!

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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/

After seeing the major improvement in my sons reading i have put together The 8 Benefits Of Bedtime Reading. It has really helped him in many ways and has developed his mindset in the process.

When it comes to bedtime my son demands a bedtime story. He loves it and all the crazy stories that unlock his imagination. Bedtime stories were never a thing growing up, it was more brush your teeth then bed. But as a child growing up in the 90’s with the lack of technology compared to today. Imagination was all I had sometimes.

Looking back on the worlds I used to create was of such enjoyment. As a parent I decided reading to my son was important not only for unlocking new worlds in his life but also through researching the psychological benefits he can get from it. The important part of bedtime reading is that this will be the last thing they hear before they enter their dreams. So I have outlined 8 benefits of bedtime reading has had on my son.

1. Makes Them Want To Read

Since we have read a book to our son at bedtime. Once the book is finished he automatically will read the same book for himself. Children want to be a mini version of you. So when you read to them and the enjoyment they get from this experience. Of course they want that for themselves. Now he’s an avid reader of David Walliams books. He loves Gangsta Granny.

2. Improves Their Reading Skills

It’s amazing the progress a child can make in such a short space of time. We have noticed a sharp improvement when we read more to him and he reads back to us. His vocabulary and the expression of words has improved immensely. Now his understanding of the world he lives in is far greater.

3. Unlocks Their Imagination

A great benefit of bedtime reading to children is the crazy adventures you can go on. The books they read unlocks their imagination to worlds they have never thought possible. The best thing is, it allows them to think anything is possible. Therefore, helps them develop their imagination which we hear and see him do daily. He has writing his own story’s about his sister called The Claw. It’s very funny and has been helped by the books we read at night.

4. 1-1 Bonding

What’s brilliant about bedtime reading is the bonding you get from it. We all have busy lives to lead and giving time to your children can be a balancing act. When they know that bedtime reading is for you and them. It gives them great comfort in that. When we get older these are memories we cherish with our parents. The times we spent together.

5. Teach Valuable Lessons Before Bed

Dr Seuss once wrote: “The more you read, the more things you will know. The more that you learn, the more places you’ll go.” For instance, we read as small child The Very Hungry Caterpillar which taught the story about the benefits of eating well while shedding light on the stages of a butterflies metamorphic life. Dr Seuss’ Lorax warns of the dangers of pollution and industrialisation in a world where the beautiful Truffala trees are all being cut down to make way for more things. “Progress” vs. the environment’s natural beauty continues to be a challenge, making this story eternally relevant. The story ends with hope and the realisation that “Unless someone like you…cares a whole awful lot…nothing is going to get better…It’s not.”

6. Makes For Good Dreams

A true benefit of bedtime stories is that your child will go to bed peace of mind. With the imagination on fire, they will take this to their dreams and intern lead to comforting and spectacular dreams. Well, that’s what we hear from our son anyway. It’s important to have good experience before bed as when we go sleep this is an important part of recalling what we have learnt the previous day to apply the next. When you were young you might have sneaked to watch a scary film. I had the fortunate and unfortunate joy of watching Chuckie. Now it’s laughable as to how not scary it is but in the early 90s as a small child the nightmare I had from watching it was scary, to say the least. That’s why it’s important to have a positive experience before bed.

7. Brain Development

By reading it helps build cognitive function within your child’s mind. A study showed that greater home reading exposure was strongly associated with activation of specific brain areas supporting semantic processing (the extraction of meaning from language). These areas are critical for oral language and later for reading. Brain areas supporting mental imagery showed particularly strong activation, suggesting that visualisation plays a key role in narrative comprehension and reading readiness, allowing children to “see” the story. As Dr Hutton said “This becomes increasingly important as children advance from books with pictures to books without them, where they must imagine what is going on in the text.” This study amongst others show the importance of reading and there is no better place to start than bedtime reading to develop your child’s brain.

8. Inspires Creation

What’s been amazing from all these stories we have read to him, is that it has inspired the creation of his storybook. Reading is a great form for unlocking the creative powers of your brain. Elon Musk the inventor of PayPal, Tesla and now Space x is a multi-billionaire who read hours upon hours of science fictions books that led to further reading of a plethora of other genres. This guided him and unlocked creativity in his brain that led to his invention. This shows the power of reading from a young age that allows further reading that inspires creation.

To conclude I hope The 8 Benefits Of Bedtime Reading has inspired you to get your old books out or visit your local charity shop to gather as many books as you can. Unlocking your child’s potential stems from bedtime reading. Why do all successful people have massive libraries in their homes? It’s because reading is important.

FUTURE MINDSET

At Future Mindset we are here to push the boundaries of our thoughts and actions. By chasing discomfort in our lives, it can lead us to unlock things inside us we never knew was there. Lets change our mindset to change our future.

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Chase discomfort and have a great day wherever you are!