What Final Fantasy X taught me about life

Bjorn
Bjorn
Aug 24, 2017 · 2 min read

I never played much of Final Fantasy X, however, while in college I had a roommate who played a lot of JRPGs. He was on Final Fantasy X and I’d occasionally sit on the couch, watch him play, and converse. Sometimes he got stuck and would ask me for help with certain button mashing exercises or on some part that required good reaction time. Being mainly a FPS player I considered my reaction time to be decent, so I’d help where I could and I liked the challenge.

The toughest challenge was the time he asked me to dodge 200 lightning bolts in a row at the Thunder Plains. The exercise involved waiting for a flash of white light (supposed to represent a lightning bolt) and then pressing the X button within a very short amount of time to “dodge” the lightning. The lightning appears at random, so you have to just react to the flash. I’d easily get to 50–60 in the beginning, and then I even got to 120 consistently. My other roommate was keeping count and would tell me the new count every time a dodged a new bolt. I found myself always failing to dodge one once I got close to finishing because I started thinking too much about finishing and lost both focus and the ability to execute the dodge successfully.

This is when I had an epiphany, and when I learned my lesson. For years, through the game of golf, I had always heard of the phrase “focus on the shot at hand” and “be in the moment” but it never really clicked until this moment. I asked my roommate keeping count to not tell me how many I had dodged any more. I had only one goal. Dodge the next bolt. That was it. Just wait for the flash and dodge, then reset. Nothing else mattered, including the current count. I got to over 250 dodges before missing one on my first try using this method. When people talk about being in the zone in sports, I think it’s somewhat related to this. Only the very present moment is what matters, focus on executing that and that alone. I’ve found this to be a valuable mindset in golf as well, but it is much easier said than done. I’m not saying to entirely lose sight of the macro, but when it comes time to execute there should be nothing else in your mind other than what is happening in the present, everything else is a distraction.

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Bjorn

Written by

Bjorn

Systems Engineer at @mobiquityinc. Occasional thought-vomiter.

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