The Game

There is nothing more important than understanding how reality works and how to
deal with it. The state of mind you bring to this process makes all the difference. I
have found it helpful to think of my life as if it were a game in which each problem I
face is a puzzle I need to solve. By solving the puzzle, I get a gem in the form of a
principle that helps me avoid the same sort of problem in the future. Collecting
these gems continually improves my decision making, so I am able to ascend to
higher and higher levels of play in which the game gets harder and the stakes
become ever greater.

Coming out of my crash, I was so broke I couldn’t muster enough money to pay for
an airplane ticket to Texas to visit a prospective client, even though the fees I’d earn
were many times the cost of the fare—so I didn’t make that trip. Still, I gradually
added clients, revenue, and a new team. With time, my upswings increased in
magnitude and my downswings were both tolerable and educational. I never
thought of what I was doing as building (or rebuilding) a company; I was just getting
the things I needed to play my game.

In gaining this perspective, I began to experience painful moments in a radically

different way. Instead of feeling frustrated or overwhelmed, I saw pain as nature’s
reminder that there is something important for me to learn. Encountering pains
and figuring out the lessons they were trying to give me became sort of a game to
me. The more I played it, the better I got at it, the less painful those situations
became, and the more rewarding the process of reflecting, developing principles,
and then getting rewards for using those principles became. I learned to love my
struggles, which I suppose is a healthy perspective to have, like learning to love
exercising (which I haven’t managed to do yet).

To help you stay centered and effective, pretend that your life is a martial art or a
game, the object of which is to get around a challenge and reach a goal. Once you
accept its rules, you’ll get used to the discomfort that comes with the constant
frustration. You will never handle everything perfectly: Mistakes are inevitable and
it’s important to recognize and accept this fact of life. The good news is that every
mistake you make can teach you something, so there’s no end to learning. You’ll
soon realize that excuses like “that’s not easy” or “it doesn’t seem fair” or even “I
can’t do that” are of no value and that it pays to push through.

So what if you don’t have all the skills you need to succeed? Don’t worry about it
because that’s true for everyone. You just have to know when they are needed and
where you can go to get them. With practice, you will eventually play this game with
a calm unstoppable centeredness in the face of adversity. Your ability to get what
you want will thrill you.