10 Reasons Why It Makes Sense to Explore Our Emotions Like Games
There can be more, but these are the most prominent ones.
You probably know the saying or a version of it, “Give me one good reason to do it, and I’ll try it out.”
But if you asked me to give you only one good reason to explore emotions gamefully, it would be hard for me to do so. When somebody asks me to name reasons for approaching anything in life gamefully, the ten fingers on my hands quickly become insufficient. In my book Gameful Project Management, a standalone book but also Book 1 in the Gameful Life series, I have listed twenty-one reasons for approaching project and time management gamefully. Twenty-one is a large number, and too many reasons would only keep you too long from the explorations I promised in this book.
Thus, here are ten good reasons to see, explore, and approach emotions, feelings, and anything related to them gamefully:
1. Drama falls away in games.
Emotions constantly wash over us. Sometimes, one at a time, but more often than not, a couple and even crowds of them simultaneously. That can be confusing and overwhelming. And dramatic! Drama falls away in games. If we explore emotions like games, they might appear much more digestible than when we try to control or manipulate them.
2. We are less reluctant to start playing a game.
We are less reluctant to start playing a game than facing something in real life, especially something inside us, like emotions. But if they were just like games, how much fun would it be to learn their gameplay?
3. We are less critical of ourselves in games.
We are less critical of ourselves in games. In a computer game, we don’t dwell on the fact that we just bumped our car into a wall. Instead, we notice what happened, reverse, turn the car around if necessary, and move on. So, we can stop experiencing emotions as “hitting” us and instead consider what that bump on our road was, move the car of our life in the direction we want to take, and do it.
4. In games, we are less concerned with what we perceive as negative.
In games, we are less concerned with what we perceive as negative. Take failures, for example. In fact, failures in games are often not considered as such but as steps on the way to winning, which is especially true for game design. Discarded game designs are rarely regarded as failures. They are scarcely analyzed for why they “failed” at all. They are just steps in the natural progression towards a successful design. The same can be seen about any supposedly negative emotion. It might not be as negative as we think and be full of useful information in the development of our lives games.
5. When you see and treat whatever you are up to as a game, you can better deal with fear and anxiety.
Coping with and trying to understand emotions and resulting feelings can cause scary and unsettling feelings and emotions. When you see and treat whatever you are up to as a game, you can better deal with fear and anxiety. The gameful approach described in this book can help you address and bypass these emotions without fighting them. The more you want to succeed in navigating your emotions or even controlling them, the bigger the fear of failing and also what might follow if you succeed. But if you explore emotions like games, then the fear diminishes considerably, and you will find yourself being more willing to try again or try something new.
6. In games, you don’t stay upset for too long.
In games, you don’t stay upset for too long. If you do, then you stop playing the game. To continue playing, you need to put your upset aside and focus on the game’s next move. Or, if this doesn’t work, you could move to another game altogether. Imagine how much easier dealing with emotions can become if you explore them like games. In any real-life situation, you can do the same: acknowledge the upset and move on.
7. Game designers are utterly resourceful.
Game designers are utterly resourceful. And you can be that, too, in an instant, if you become aware that you are both the designer (or at least co-designer) and player (co-player) of your life’s and emotion games. This awareness can give you a long-sought feeling of control over your emotions. That comes from the fact that even if emotions appear to happen to you seemingly out of the blue, your choices and actions precede them, mixed with your previous experiences and how the worlds around and inside you unfold. All that affects your emotions. Suppose you consider anything you do, encounter, experience, or feel as a game, of which you are the designer and the player. In that case, you immediately become resourceful on how to adjust the flow of your, if not life as a whole, then the next actions so that all those things you do, encounter, experience, and feel become fun and joyful for you and those who cross ways with you. With gameful practice, resourcefulness becomes effortless and extremely fun.
8. Empathy is more natural in games.
Empathy is more natural in games, and we judge our partners in games less than those we interact with in situations outside of games. Other nurturing emotions like compassion, self-compassion, patience, resilience, and others are more often demonstrated by the players, even if they might not as often show them in situations outside of games in their traditional sense. When you approach your emotions and feelings gamefully, you can tap into those nurturing emotions more easily than you otherwise would. So, switching from upsetting and even damaging emotion games to those that strengthen, uplift, and empower you will become much easier. In addition to that, approaching your life and emotions gamefully allows you to treat yourself as your most wanted customer, i.e., player, and at the same time, your favorite game designer, to whom you gladly give your feedback as a player to make your favorite games — which include rewarding emotions — even better. And when you treat yourself like that, you will also treat others with kindness more consistently, and vice versa, since people tend to mirror our behavior toward them.
9. Games are fun and contain elements that contribute to our happiness.
Since games are fun and contain elements that contribute to our happiness, why not approach all areas of our lives — including dealing with our emotions and feelings — so that they become fun, engaging, and entertaining for us in the same way that games do? If we use fun as the goal, compass, and measuring tool in our real-life games, along with awareness and progress in small steps, then all those nurturing, soothing, strengthening, empowering emotions and feelings will come naturally as by-products without us trying to manipulate or control them in any way.
10. Anything in life is already a game.
Anything in life is already a game; we just don’t always see it that way.
I started this book with three quotes. The following three quotes seem like a great bridge between this chapter about the “whys” and those about the “hows” that follow:
“Self-discovery isn’t meant to be painful. If it is, then you’re working on yourself, lost in the story of your life, or simply resisting what is.”
— Ariel & Shya Kane, Practical Enlightenment
[Source: Kane, Ariel; Shya Kane. Practical Enlightenment (Loc. 1137). ASK Productions, Inc. in conjunction with Waterfront Press. Kindle Edition.]
“[Y]our vision will become clear only when you can look into your own heart. Without, everything seems discordant; only within does it coalesce into unity. Who looks outside dreams; who looks inside awakes.”
— Carl Jung
[Note on the source: I am not sure where I found or read for the first time the famous and heavily quoted words of wisdom by Carl Jung saying, “Who looks outside dreams; who looks inside awakes.” When I tried to find its source, I discovered an intriguing article by Angeliki Yiassemides, a certified Jungian analyst with the International Association for Analytical Psychology (IAAP), in her article “(Mis)using Jung; or, ‘Who looks outside dreams; who looks inside awakes’.” This article inspired me to use a fuller version of this quote. You can read the article and see the source of the quote in its headlining photograph by following this link.]
“It could work. Not only could it work, it could be fun. An adventure.”
— Nora Roberts, Daring to Dream
[Source: Roberts, Nora. Daring to Dream (Dream Trilogy Book 1) (p. 120). Penguin Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.]
About this article:
This is a slightly modified excerpt from Navigate Your Emotions by Exploring Them Like Games: How to Feel with Curiosity Rather Than Suffering. To find out more about the book, check out the description below.
In this book, Victoria Ichizli-Bartels offers simple tools to explore your emotions, resulting feelings, and connected experiences as if they were games.
Ichizli-Bartels argues that you may not be able to control your emotions, but you can navigate them; often without having to act through them, but allowing yourself to feel with curiosity and without suffering, pressure, or guilt. All you have to do is know your tools and use them well during your navigation adventure.
Navigate Your Emotions by Exploring Them Like Games is a surprising, revolutionary, and never-before-undertaken approach to exploring emotions, feelings, and experiences by dissecting them into the main and well-known game components: goals, rules, feedback systems, and voluntary participation.
The three parts of the book present a detailed introduction to the approach, many examples of gameful explorations of emotions, feelings, and related concepts considered in pairs, and true stories from the author’s life illustrating sometimes surprising but always illuminating experiences of emotions.
The concluding two chapters will introduce you to the start of an infinite list of emotions, feelings, and related concepts and give you some ideas and a template for your gameful explorations of emotions.
Letting yourself feel an emotion does not need to be stressful or scary. Take the gameful challenge this book offers. Learn how to navigate your emotions by exploring them like games, the tools you will need for that, and what you can do to control these tools and become the best designer and player of the fantastic game collection that is your life.
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