Adam Decker

Dozens of reviews said the game helped overcome depression. Dark Souls. Hmm. Though I don’t deal with depression, I was curious. I bought the game.

Holy toledo.

Playing Dark Souls isn’t your average “relax after school/work” sort of videogame. It’s a white-knuckled, rage-inducing, smash your head against a wall until it breaks or you break sort of game.

And it may be the greatest game of all time.

The World of a Life-Changing Game

Dark Souls is a dark fantasy open world role-playing game. Imagine if Sauron had won in the Lord of the Rings. Start there. Then you have your sword, shield, armor. Oh, and you’re always 4 hits away from dying. Often less.

You travel through a cursed and dying land, where 95% of people have become mindless, violent hollows. The only thing keeping the 5% going is purpose. If they have a purpose, they retain their sanity. If they lose it, they lose themselves entirely.

As you try to bring life back to the world (though you have no idea how for a large portion of the game,) you encounter many kinds of people. Some have nearly given up, others are knights with the most magnificent optimism you have ever seen, and very occasionally, You meet someone who cares about you. “Stay safe friend. Don’t you go hollow.”

These encounters are few and far between. Most of what you encounter is mindless soldiers who hack you to ribbons, demon bosses that squash you into the ground over and over again, and the mockery of the game’s “YOU DIED” screen. You see that one a lot.

To someone with depression, it’s a fair analogy for life. Everything is out to get you. The world is dark and you don’t really know what you’re dong. It sometimes feels pointless to try, because no matter how many times you try, you cannot defeat that one enemy.

The Mechanics of a Life-Changing Game

Dark Souls makes no apologies for being an incredibly difficult game. The incredible thing is how fair this difficulty is.

If you die, it’s your fault. Always.

The enemies telegraph their attacks so you can know to dodge. If you observe and learn, you survive. Only to be crushed by the next type of enemy and you have to learn his pattern too.

This is where the game’s genius is. When you finally, after 3, 5, 10, even 20 attempts, beat that enemy or that boss, you feel elated. You overcame something that was totally impossible just a minute ago. I have jumped up and shouted in triumph after several incredibly difficult bosses.

A world that makes everything feel dark and impossible coupled with the most magnificent sense of triumph for those who persevere. Hmm. I wonder where that could be useful?

That’s the reason why this game helps many players overcome or deal with their depression. By playing the game, they overcome the same sort of self-defeating thoughts that hold them back in real life.

And me? I learned a bit of grit, perseverance, and mental toughness. Just a taste. A seed to grow into something stronger. But I had never encountered any medium that teaches those soft skills in a way where you experience them.

The Power of a Videogame

After I played this game, I realized it showed a possibility that nobody has ever really thought of before.

Videogames could be one of the most effective education tools ever made. We just have to build the game right.

Games like Dark Souls force you to use certain types of thinking and problem solving to beat them. If you don’t, you won’t beat the game.

We could make games that teach problem-solving without forcing it. We could make games that inspire curiosity towards the real world. We could make games that build resilience. The key is to build those thought-patterns into the gameplay.

Luminosity was a mind-training exercise that tried to be a game. It doesn’t work well. We need actual games that happen to have mind-training elements built into them. Games that help you live life outside the game.

With virtual reality and augmented reality right around the corner, we will have some of the most powerful computing tools ever.

They can be used to escape reality, or we can use them to help us live in reality. I know which path I want to take.

Isaac Moorehouse, the founder of the Praxis Program, says that having purpose can kill you.

You place undue stress on yourself by saying “this is my purpose,” because you must fit everything you do into the label you gave yourself.

A better approach is to ask questions. Instead of saying “I want to help others be creative” say, “What makes people creative?” Instead of “I want to be free to travel” ask “What would it take to travel independently?”

So I decided to tackle one of mine. “I want to pitch deals” becomes “What would I do if I pitched deals?”

Pitching Ideas

There’s a gap in the startup world. Brilliant ideas that could change hundreds and thousands of lives fail every day.

I would help them succeed. I would find startups, businesses, and real estate deals that have the potential to affect real change and get them the funding they needed.

As I worked with them, I would create a pitch that positions them as a high-status, highly desireable investment. The investors would understand the why behind the idea, not just the numbers and profit projections. I would make them want to be part of it.

Learning to Pitch

Before I can do that, I need practice. I know some of the best principles of making a pitch. I’ve studied books on pitching and psychology from such masters as Oren Klaff, an investment deal pitchman and author of Pitch Anything, and Sally Hogshead, author of Fascinate.

These and other books lay a foundation for an intellectual understanding of what makes an amazing pitch, but I have little experience applying them.

This year, I’ll change that. I will practice and apply what I know so I can be persuasive when it matters most. I need to be ready.

So what about you? What do you define yourself as? Now shift that definition into a question. What do you see differently?

I’ve noticed that people label themselves as pessimists, optimists, and realists. When they do, they rob themselves of a huge wealth of mental power. Each mindset is valuable, and you should use them when they are most helpful.

If you combine them, they become something else entirely.

Realism is seeing the world as it is. Seeing the facts and how they work together. It’s the view that tries to see both sides of a situation. However, it often fails to see the reality of what is possible. It sets “realistic” goals, never realizing how small its thinking is.

Optimism is much better at seeing possibility. It sees what you have, it sees what could be, and it becomes excited and believes such fantastic goals are possible. But if you rely on optimism by itself, if you always expect things to go well, you will get slammed by life when it decides to throw you a curve.

That’s where pessimism is helpful. Pessimism asks “what could go wrong?” and gives an encyclopedia of answers. If pessimism is trained right, it leads to competence. Astronauts and their trainers are trained pessimists. They continually ask themselves “What’s the next thing that could kill me?” and figure out how to counter it.

Combining these states of mind leads to a better grasp of reality, higher goals, and a better understanding of what could get in the way, and how to solve the problems as they arise. If you call yourself one of them, try one of the others, and combine it with yours.

I think you’ll be pleased with the results.

Christmas time closes.
Family strengthened. Bonds deepened.
Until it’s next time.

 

Apollo 13 is one of the greatest pieces of cinema ever created, showing some of the best of humanity through one of the most intense trials we have ever gone through. A flight to the moon became a race to get the crew home after an oxygen tank exploded. There’s a lot we can learn from it.

1. You can be calm under pressure. Learn how. Astronauts spend years learning to deal with stress and making good decisions while under it.

2. Focus on solutions. NASA would not have brought the astronauts home if they had tried to figure out exactly how each problem went wrong. Instead, they focused on what was available, and how to use it to get them home.

3. Imagining things that can go wrong is actually a good thing. NASA scientists spend years coming up with things that might go wrong and ways to overcome them. There were a lot of problems on Apollo 13 that were solved because someone had come up with a solution to a completely unrelated problem. You can do the same. What might go wrong with what you think will happen? How can you solve it?

4. Big problems are a series of small problems. The big problem was getting the crew back safely. After the ship was crippled, many problems cropped up. They faced one problem at a time, never letting themselves get overwhelmed by how huge the problem was. Take it one piece at a time.

While fantasy may inspire with things that can never be, NASA inspires by what is, and what is possible. Learning to think a little like the men behind the successful failure of Apollo 13 can help you out a lot.

What do you tell a child when they grow up and start to realize that Santa Claus doesn’t actually exist? That a toyshop at the north pole is impossible? That the man in the red suit at the mall isn’t actually Santa?

Simple. You tell them that it’s their time to be Santa. Help them pick someone who they can be Santa Claus for. They pick the gift and deliver it on Christmas Eve without letting the giftee know who they are.

You are Santa Claus.

You can make the difference to another person. Don’t let the toy store or that old claymation Santa take away your right to be Santa to someone. You can bring that magic.

So what are you waiting for? Christmas is today. Go be Santa.

You can read fantasy to improve your life.

In Terry Pratchett’s Wee Free Men, you can become a witch if you have the abilities of First Sight and Second Thoughts. First Sight is the ability to see what is really there, rather than what you wish was there. Second Thought is thinking about your thoughts. (There are also third thought and fourth thoughts, but you may end up walking into a tree if you use those too much.)

Ordinary abilities become fantastical in the right light. You can use that as motivation to learn the skills and abilities you really want to have. Do you see the world as it is or do you see it as you want it to seem? That thought you just had. Why did you think it? Does it actually make sense? What do you think about having that thought?

Magic as Aspiration

Magic inspires new thinking when it is framed as science instead of mystery.

In The Emperor’s Soul by Brandon Sanderson, the Forger can recraft anything into nearly anything else by studying its history and changing a few details. She could change a plain vase into a 4th century Ming Dynasty masterpiece by altering when the clay was molded and who it was molded by. Tiny detail changes could create an entirely different outcome and identity for the same materials.

What would you be if some details of your life had been different? What if you were born to different people? Had different friends? Succeeded on that one project that failed?

What version of you ended up successful? What details were different that helped them get there?

Can you use some of their strength?

Approaching Problems Differently

I approach problems differently when I think this way. I don’t believe that magic is real, but I find great benefit in imagining that it already is.

Somewhere there is a planet where they write fantasy about Earth.

What do you think they say about us?

What might they say about you?

A man flew over Dubai with a pair of 4-foot wings with jet engines. Another hovered on air for over 1000 feet. Virtual reality experiences are becoming more and more commonplace, and dozens of developers are creating augmented reality that interacts with the real world. Nasa is working on an engine that uses no propellant and seems to defy traditional physics. Automatic cars are nearing real usability, and visionary billionaires are reaching for other planets.

I geek out like a school kid when I hear about things like this. I love seeing humanity reach for our dreams and begin achieving them. But I think the thing that excites me the most isn’t a new technological marvel, it how easy it is for each of us to improve ourselves.

Audiobooks on our phones. E-books on our readers. The vastness of human experience that we can find online. Each of these things makes finding ways to improve ourselves only a click or touch away.

Why do we waste so much time?

What do you want to do? Find a book. Find an article. Heck, ask Yahoo for crying out loud. The information is right there. Take it. Use it. Shape your life the way the people behind those technical marvels have. They didn’t wait for anybody to tell them what to do. Neither should you.

I sit here typing in my favorite chair next to my parents’ Christmas tree. I’ve just arrived with my sister after a 9-hour drive. Most of the family was here waiting for us, excited for us to come home. I’m very tired, but very excited for our Christmas together.

Tomorrow we will have our traditional gingerbread house building contest. We will wrap presents and do our last minute shopping. There’s a house here in town that puts on a Christmas light show synced with the radio. We’ll probably go see that in the next few days.

I love coming home for Christmas. We aren’t a perfect family. We don’t see eye to eye on everything, and occasionally we have our fights. But we love each other, and we still love each other after we disagree. During Christmas, that becomes something special.

It becomes wonderful times together and jokes to laugh about. It becomes watching the Muppet Christmas Carol and Charlie Brown’s Christmas, and listening to Christmas music as we clean up after dinner. This is Christmas for me.

Sherlock Holmes’ Memory Palace

Sherlock Holmes has always had the ability to inspire his fans to think a little more critically or observe more carefully. BBC’s Sherlock is no different. Many people, myself included, have been so inspired by the way he dissects a situation that we try to learn how he does it.

One interesting twist that the BBC show brings to Sherlock’s usual arsenal of logic and observation is something called a mind palace. Holmes was in the middle of a difficult case and needed more information that he was sure he had seen before.

So he went into a quiet room and began thinking. Text started flying across the screen, describing what Sherlock was thinking, and before too long, he had remembered what he needed to solve the case.

The Method of Loci

What Sherlock calls a mind palace is actually a memory technique from the days of ancient greek philosophers. Back then it was called the method of loci, or the method of location. Orators and statesmen would use memory palaces to memorize long speeches or the great epics.

It involves taking a physical journey in your mind, and storing memories in ridiculous ways along the way. If you wanted to store a shopping list consisting of eggs, bread, and milk, your journey might begin like this:

You stand in front of your door. Your eyes are drawn towards the floor because you hear an excited squeaking voice. Pointed at the door is a tiny military tank piloted by a mouse. He shouts “Fire!” and the tank fires an egg, which splatters against your door.

The bread and milk would have similarly ridiculous images further in your house. Maybe a living toaster chasing a loaf of bread running away and a milk jug licking a cat. The more ridiculous the better, because our minds latch onto the unusual.

Setting Up Your Own

Many people try out making a memory palace at some point in their lives. I’ve tried at least 3 times. Most people who look into it will either decide they don’t have a reason to use it, or decide it’s too hard to set up in a useful way.

Nearly all of the guides I’ve looked at recommend that you begin your memory palace with your bedroom or your house. I found this was useful for learning the technique initially, but it felt too small to store everything I wanted to. There wasn’t enough space, and it wasn’t flexible enough to expand.

Videogame Maps

Using a videogame map was much more effective. Last year I needed to remember the principles of a stack of business books I read. Earlier that summer I had been playing Ark: Survival Evolved. I realized it was the perfect solution to my problem.

Ark had a huge map with all sorts of unique terrain. It had trails, rivers, forts caves, enough for a nearly endless supply of anchors to place memories on. I used my memory palace to secure the major principles and many of the applications in my mind. It worked perfectly.

Using a videogame map was so much easier than trying to fit random facts into my normal surroundings, and didn’t require me to create one from scratch.

So give it a try. Pick your favorite videogame. Ark, Minecraft, Skyrim, Zelda, (my favorite is Dark Souls,) almost any open-world game could be made into a memory palace, and many other types of game as well. Use your imagination. Make your palace your own. Store what you find useful. Now, go be Sherlock.