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The Single Player Game
The Single Player Game
Life is the Ultimate Single Player Game
And yet, each day almost every person on the planet is playing as if life was a multiplayer game. What if you just started playing a single player game against yourself? What would happen?
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What does Multiplayer Game mean?
A multiplayer game is where multiple players participate and “playing together” means that they are competing with one another in real time. Technically, this is called a multiplayer competitive game, but I’m shortening it here.
It turns out that we are taught to play life in multiplayer mode instead of single player mode. In childhood and throughout adulthood we are taught words that can only arise in multiplayer mode where we are each competing with each other.
Fastest.
Smartest.
Strongest.
Most.
Best.
You can only apply these words when you are in a multiplayer game. They also can only be evaluated externally against someone else.
Life in single player mode provides us words on which only you can teach and evaluate yourself.
Faster.
Smarter.
Stronger.
More.
Better.
Two Key Take Aways:
1) Best is an external measure. Better is an internal measure.
2) Best is finite. Better is infinite.
Why is it important to play in Single Player Mode . . . Two Related Multiplayer Mode Problems . . .
Comparing Yourself to Others:
When you constantly compare yourself to others, you focus on what you lack rather than what you have. You measure what’s missing in your life and even when you have acquired what you thought you were missing, you start re-comparing yourself to someone else and the cycle repeats itself. So, your entire life you have feelings of inadequacy and the never-ending cycle of striving for more. Instead of taking stock of what you have, building your self-esteem through measured growth, and appreciating your own unique journey, you are now consumed by what’s outside of your single player game. Comparison works in two harmful ways: 1) robs you of happiness in the present and 2) prevents you from embracing your own individuality.
All Pain Comes from Wanting:
Comparison leads to deeply to wanting what you think you are missing. You know that sense of lacking and the dissatisfaction of a desire unfilled — that pain comes from wanting. It is the state of being dissatisfied with our lives and craving things that creates human suffering. While this pain is a hole that was created internally, most will not wake up to the fact that this suffering can never be satisfied with a change in external conditions and circumstances. True contentment comes from finding fulfillment within yourself and embracing the present moment as it is.
Rules of the Game
It is easy to get pulled off track by the multiplayer game. We are even taught the rules of the game from friends, family, society, marketing, and advertising. They all involve external validation of others and comparison between yourself and someone else. This validation is out of your hands and yet it is supposed to eventually lead to something good for you personally.
Check out some of these rules in the multiplayer game, none of which are healthy and none of which I’m endorsing in anyway.
Go Work Out = You Get to Look Good = Then Maybe You Can Feel Good. That’s a rule of the game given to us socially. Now, since you are playing in the multiplayer game, other people can see if you are doing a good job or not at the “working out” rule. If you are looking good and someone else notices, you can win self-esteem in the process. In Single Player Mode, you are motivated by life longevity, self accomplishment, and knowing that all roles in your life require your continued health.
Work Hard = Get Rich = You Get to Buy _______ = You Get Happiness. Training yourself to be happy is completely internal and yet the rule in the multiplayer game is to make externally seen product (work), then get external validation (money), then externally show validation to society (luxury item), and then you get internal happiness. Let’s call this the “work your way to happiness” rule. In Single Player Mode, you know that contentment and gratitude lead to happiness.
Get Likes = Get Cool = How Can You Be Lonely. This newest rule is about relative coolness arising from the most shallow and virtual social interactions. Since you are the most connected and influential in this social realm, there isn’t away to be lonely, right? This is the “You have so many friends” rule. In Single Player Mode, you know that deep personal relationships with a few trusted friends is what cures loneliness.
I Win = Someone Must Lose. There are a lot of scarcity thinking in the multiplayer game. When we see people getting ahead, we work to tear them down because we don’t need them getting ahead of us or getting something before us. The “Win-Lose” rule is everywhere and probably even programmed into our reptilian brains from birth under self-preservation instincts. In Single Player Mode, you know that the world is abundant and that there are opportunities for Win-Win all the time.
You can find a whole bunch of rules used in the multiplayer game that are adopted consciously or, most likely, unconsciously. There is the perfect host, the best pickleball player, the most well read, the guy with the fastest car, or having the most accomplished kids. I’m not saying that achievement is in and of itself is bad, but people need to know what game they are playing and why they are playing it at a deep and fundamental level. They need to know the rules they have adopted and whether or not those rules will get them truly what they want out of life. t
Even more interesting is that when you play the multiplayer competitive game, the competitor next to you may be playing the same game, but doing it for different or even the wrong reasons. When you are each playing the same game for different reasons, you may think that the person sitting on top of the trophy stage is happy, healthy, and fulfilled with being the best, but ultimately and sadly they may never be. This is the problem with rules above in the multiplayer game.
You don't want this to be the case for yourself. There is a big difference between playing in single player mode and multiplayer mode.
The Differences
It is time to wake up to the difference in the Single Player and Multiplayer Game.
Multiplayer Game: Be the best.
Single Player Game: Be the only.
Multiplayer Game: Scarcity.
Single Player Game: Abundance.
Multiplayer Game: Failure is a Person
Single Player Game: Failure is an Event.
Multiplayer Game: "I failed."
Single Player Game: "I'm growing."
Multiplayer Game: Once we are successful, we will be happy.
Single Player Game: Once we are happy, we will be successful.
Multiplayer Game: I must be the greatest at something, but that means I had to start off as the worst or at least some significant deficit.
Single Player Game: I’m already whole, but I get to expand, gain, and grow on my terms where all that matters is my journey.
How to Win
The true and real winners are those who removed themselves from the multiplayer game. In fact, they stopped playing games altogether. Stepping into single player mode means possessing exceptional self-control, mental strength, and self-awareness, and not needing something from somebody else including validation. Taking it a step further, the best single mode game players won’t even view it as a single player game at all, because games can be won and lost. Instead winning and losing no longer matters. There is no external progress or validation. There is only internal contentment, happiness, and personal growth on your own personal journey.
You are no longer the best; you are the only.
To now borrow from one of my upcoming books . . .
“Heroes and especially superheroes are NOT the best at something; They are THE ONLY at something. For you to change your being and thus impact, competing isn't the key anymore. You need something that is beyond being the best. Don’t seek to be the best. Seek to be the only.
“You need to think about something that only you can accomplish, where only your skills will enable a breakthrough. You alone sit at this moment in time, with your specific and unique genetic makeup that no one else in the world has, and with only your experiences and knowledge. You are specifically here for a reason. It is time to find it. You do not need to boil the ocean. There is something that only you can do or be for yourself and others, however great or small.”
Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will rule your life and you will call it Fate.”—Carl Jung
Do we need to do hard things?
“The ability to do hard things is perhaps the most useful ability you can foster in yourself or your children. And proof that you are someone who can do them is one of the most useful assets you can have on your life resume.”
Learn more in this article: https://blog.nateliason.com/p/proof-you-can-do-hard-things
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