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.