Life Mechanics: How Our Choices Affect Our Experience
- Oct 21, 2019
- 3 min read
Every choice we make can drastically impact our life experience. By examining how we play games, we can understand how to make better decisions
Living requires making complex choices every day. Our decisions and the way we make decisions can drastically color our experience of reality.
If we decide to commit to one action without understanding the consequences of it, we may set ourselves up for failure. Alternatively, if we spend too much time fleshing out the pros and cons of every decision we make, then we may miss out on several opportunities that require immediate action. With so many options and consequences to every choice, how can we determine the right course of action? Our behaviors in video games can provide us with some insight.
RPG’s require making a battery of choices, each of which have long-term impacts on the game. Do we create tank builds that face enemies head on, or a wittier stealthy class? Do we party up or face the world solo? These types of decisions may seem unique to RPG’s but we make similar choices on a daily basis. Should I talk to that cute guy/girl and risk getting rejected or do I play it safe and keep my mouth shut? Should I work in a group and risk dealing with bad team members or work alone and have all the weight fall on my shoulders? Although these choices have complicated implications, the way we make choices in RPG’s can shed light on how we make decisions in our daily lives.
The tools we equip, the characters we talk to, and the places we go all impact our experiences.
Think of the way you play games such as Skyrim, Breath of the Wild, or The Witcher III. How do you tend to play these games? Do you pick an aggressive approach? A slow and strategic approach? Perhaps a balanced approach? Each of these play styles will influence your overall experience of the game. Diving into situations without thought will likely create a high-pressure and fast-paced environment. However, you will likely experience more failure (especially if you play on a higher difficulty). On the other hand, taking your time and thinking out how you approach a situation will likely result in less-exciting gameplay, but fewer failures. Now, imagine if you could only play through these games one time. Would you feel regret if you stuck to a single playstyle and never got to experience other parts of the game?
You can think of our lives as an RPG with a single playthrough. Each of our decisions drastically impacts our experience of our own game. By jumping into decisions, life will ultimately provide more exciting experiences at the cost of an increased risk of failure. Furthermore, if you take time weighing out the best strategy, you will experience fewer failures at the cost of exciting experiences. In order to experience life fully, we must use both of these strategies throughout our lives. By becoming aware of our decisions, we can figure out how to alter our decisions to create a better life.
Sometimes you just need to jump right in.
To figure out whether we should dive in or create a strategy, you can ask yourself these questions:
Does your life seem boring? Could you make a leap of faith in order to spice it up?
Do you feel like you run into failure after failure? Is there a way you could step back and find a better route?
Have you experienced an opportunity that fits 95 percent of what you want out of your career, partner, friend, or teammate but failed to make a quick enough decision? Could you find a way to commit to these opportunities quickly?
Have you jumped into opportunities that you did not think out properly? How did these opportunities make you feel? Is there a way you can slow down and negotiate your decisions without losing the opportunity?
By answering these questions, you have gained a fundamental grasp on how you tend to make decisions. From this understanding, you can create strategies to change your decisions in order to live life fully. By balancing bold-action with strategy, you can equip yourself to live your best life.
-Yak
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