Leveling Up in Video Games and How it can be Applied in Real Life

Before I became anything else, I first became a gamer. My parents bought the PlayStation One for me and my two older brothers, and we were hooked with video games ever since. I was always fascinated by video games. They were fun and entertaining. When I was a kid, I could play them all day on the weekend breaks from school. I still play video games to this day, but not as much as I did when I was a kid.

There was one concept in video games that I always thought about. It's called "Level Up." It's a situation where your character or player reaches a higher level where they get stronger, faster, smarter, overall better than their previous level. I always reach a feeling of euphoria, even just for a few seconds whenever I see the level up icon on my character when I play those games. It made me feel like I accomplished something wonderful.

I then thought that hey, this can be applied in real life too! Think about it. There are levels in almost everything in life. In school, there is Pre-school > Elementary > High School > College/University > graduate school/law school/medicine school. In a job, there's usually an Entry-level > Supervisor > Manager > CEO/Owner. In sports, there's a Beginner > Amateur > Professional > World Class. There are levels everywhere.

How can we apply this to real life though? These are just games though? Here are a few tips:

1) Grind and Put In The Work

In RPGs, you have to kill enemies, monsters or bosses to raise your level usually. You have to kill a lot of these just to raise your level. It's the same thing in real life but not with monsters or enemies though. You have to work hard and make an effort to raise your level.

For example, if you work in a sales job, then you have to make a certain number of calls. There are quotas, and the best salesman goes above and beyond those quotas to become the best. If the average salesman does 30 sales calls a day, then the top salesman does at least 80 sales calls a day. Work, work, then work some more.

2) Find out Ways to Earn Experience

In games, there are other ways to raise your level rather than kill monsters. These are usually quests and sidequests, basically a set of tasks you do in exchange for a reward. In real life, there are quests and sidequests you have to take to get better.

Let's take sidequests, for example, these are optional quests but they will greatly help in making you better suited to take on the main quests. You can do optional things to better yourself like taking a class, going to a seminar, reading a book, getting a mentor, learning a new language, etc. These are optional so you don't have to do them, but if you do, you will get your extra reward and raise your level faster.

3) Get Great Teammates

There are games where you have to play with other people. These games are where you get a team to work towards a common goal or to defeat the opposing team. There is a saying that "you are only as strong as your weakest link" so if you have bad teammates, then no matter how good you are, you will have bad results.

Jim Rohn said that "You are the average of the 5 people you spend the most time with." This applies to the team around you. If you spend time with a group of people, then you will become like the people in that group.

So I suggest you get the best team that you can. The higher level they are, the better. Spend time with the Valedictorian, the top student, the best-selling writer, the top artist, the CEO, the owner, the top employee, the best performer of the month, the millionaire, the rich businessman, top salesman, and so on. If you want to be a top player, then hang out and play with the current top players.

CAVEAT: In games, there is a Max Level, in real life there is no such thing.

Take note of this. Sometimes there are max levels in the game. It can be level 99 or 100 or 200 or whatever. In real life, there is no such thing as a max level. There is always room for improvement. This is the Japanese concept called Kaizen. It says that you should strive for constant and never-ending improvement. If you think you are the best and you have mastered everything there is to master, that's not the case. There are always new things you can learn to raise your level. Even the master sometimes acts like a beginner to learn something new.

Now you know how to raise your level in this game called Life.

That Awkward Stage of Learning Something New

Remember the time you learned how to walk when you were a baby? Of course not because you were a baby back then! Kidding aside, the reason why I want you to remember that is that when we were babies and were learning how to walk, we stumbled and failed many times before we actually learned how to properly walk. Sure our parents tried to teach us, but we learned it ourselves by trying and trying until we succeeded. 

That is the awkward stage of learning. Whenever we try to learn something new, there's an immensely hard part at the beginning where we are awkward and we make a lot of mistakes and fail before we get it right the first time. Everyone goes through this. Everyone starts as being a beginner at anything in life.

Now, remember the time when you tried to learn how to ride the bicycle. Almost everyone can relate to this as we fell and scratched our knees and legs whenever we made a mistake at the start of learning. Eventually, though, we learned how to ride the bike. Some people have even mastered riding the bike with no hands on the grip!

This also applies to everyday things like learning how to drive a car, cook, clean the house, read, write, speak, etc.

Also, we can apply this to other complicated and advanced matters in life like learning how to go on a date. I remember my first date with a girl. I was so nervous and shy, that my date thought of me as a weirdo. Now, I've gone on many dates and the women I went out with usually enjoy the date and my company as much as I enjoy them also.

Remember this as you apply this awkward learning to stage to other advanced matters as well like learning how to travel, public speaking, make a presentation, doing a sales talk, teaching people, learning how to start a business, trying a new job, learning a second language, meeting new friends, etc.

Allow yourself to make mistakes and fail at the start, learn from your mistakes and failures because that is how we learn new things. Everyone makes mistakes. Every master starts as a beginner. 

Why "Never Give Up" doesn't apply to Everybody

We've all heard of cliche phrases. There's that Nike phrase "Just Do It," there's also that Bob Marley song "Don't Worry, Be Happy," and the two most overused words for people aspiring to be successful and that is "Work Hard." Although there's one ubiquitous phrase that became my favorite the moment I've heard of it, and that phrase is "Never Give Up." 

Most people like this phrase. It shows perseverance against all odds, inhuman resilience. It shows a person willing to go through hundreds or even thousands of failures and rejections just to taste their big success. 

There are countless stories on the internet like these. From ultra famous names to regular everyday people. From Steve Jobs to Sylvester Stallone to Colonel Sanders of KFC. They went through a number of failures or rejections to get where they are today.

Before you get inspired to persist at whatever that you are doing or working on right now, there is one big caveat that many people don't realize about this: This is not applicable to everybody.

What if your current job is not something that you like or actually hate? What if you don't even give a damn on the current project you're working on? What if somebody else told you to start that hobby that you're not even the least bit interested in? What if the person you're dating is not the right one for you?

These are just some of the exceptions to this famous phrase. There are some things in life that if you give up on, then your life will actually become better. After you give up on certain things, you might try a new thing and little that you know that this new thing will be much better for you than that thing you gave up on.

Don't get me wrong, you shouldn't give up on something that you truly care about, but if this something does not bring you joy or happiness anymore, then, by all means, give up on it and make room for something far better.

It's REDIRECTION, not rejection.

Everybody has been rejected in their lives, and I mean everybody. I laugh at it now, but I used to have a friend who said to me: "Bro, I have NEVER been rejected by a girl, not even once!" That guy was about 3 or 4 years younger than me, and we were both teenagers then. It made me think, is that guy that handsome? Or is he just bragging about something that isn't true? It doesn't matter because I'm pretty sure he was lying.

Looking at it now, it made me look back at the girls who rejected me...wow there's a lot of them. Although now I realize that thank God they rejected me! It hurts at first, but if you think about it, those girls are doing you a favor. Girls rejecting you simply means that they aren't right for you. You might be thinking "but I really like that girl!" but think about it, would you honestly date someone that doesn't like you? Every rejection that I get in my love life, gets me closer to the girl that I will end up with, whoever she is (God I hope I meet her soon).

This not only applies to your dating life, but also in your career as well. I remember in my last job I was terminated after only one month. At first, it was devastating, but later on, I realized that it was a blessing in disguise. I worked at the night shift, and I'm one of those people that is not allowed to work the night shift because of health issues.

In the book, The Success Principles by Jack Canfield he had a formula for rejection: "SWSWSWSW" which means "Some Will Some Won't So What? Someone's Waiting." This means that no matter how many rejections you receive, someone out there is willing to say yes to you, but you've got to go through the many nos to get your yes.

Every rejection is a redirection to something better.