All posts by vica

How To Live Happy Now

Self-Gamification
(Image courtesy of the author)

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Many of us have very different dreams. But most people want to be happy and want their loved ones to be happy.

We often perceive happiness as a destination or a goal, for which we have to work hard. But there is an old gem of wisdom, which says something different.

You can see it on the little plack I have at home, in the picture above. I opened my book Self-Gamification Happiness Formula with it:

“Happiness is not a destination. It is a way of life.”
— Anonymous

And with these, I closed the book:

“Be content with what you have; rejoice in the way things are. When you realize there is nothing lacking, the world belongs to you.”
— Lao Tsu

“Happiness is a choice, not a result. Nothing will make you happy until you choose to be happy. No person will make you happy unless you decide to be happy. Your happiness will not come to you. It can only come from you.”
— Ralph Marston

I found these two on a blouse I once bought and loved wearing for special occasions.

They are brilliant and to the point. But you might ask how you can live a happy life, as these pearls of wisdom suggest.

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What being happy really means

While turning my life into games, exploring the process, and writing about it in my books, I realized that being happy does not mean being constantly happy. But it means to experiment, being curious, and as soon as you see that you deviated from your happy path, you use your trusty toolset to find back to your happy path.

Discovering this toolset was one reason I called my second book on turning life into fun games a “Happiness Formula.” It really is a formula to help us when we think that we deviated or bounced off our path of being happy.

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Your tools to turn life into fun games

These tools — or this formula — is as follows:

  • Awareness, plus
  • Ability to break anything —a challenge, project, task, activity — into the smallest, most effortless, and digestible bits, and
  • Gamefulness and playfulness.

And here is one more quote I used in the book, which rounds up wonderfully the message of those above. I found it when I wrote the concluding chapter of the Self-Gamification Happiness Formula:

“Life is a game and you are the player.
As you master the game, so you also create it.”
— Jay Woodman

To find out more about how you can design and play the fantastic collection of games called life, check out the Self-Gamification Happiness Formula, which is an in-depth discourse on how you can find back to your happy way of life by applying the happiness formula of Self-Gamification, which embraces anthropology, kaizen, and gamification — the three in one toolset listed above.

To take a look at the book and buy it on Amazon, click on its title above or this image below. Please note that you can buy the book as an e-book, paperback, or audiobook:

If you want to see where else you can buy it, then go to the book’s page on this website here.

Alternatively, you can subscribe to my page, Optimist Writer, on ko-fi for $5 a month, and besides supporting what I do, you will also get access to all my motivational books, which I share there once a month or each time a book is out. Right now, you can get access to four of my books there — one upon subscription or one-time support, and three in the posts solely for subscribers. Since yesterday, the Self-Gamification Happiness Formula is one of the three. 😀

Enjoy your happy path and let it be gameful, playful, and fun!

How to Persevere With Joy Instead of Effort

Self-Gamification
(Image courtesy of the author)

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Without looking into a dictionary, ask yourself what you think “to persevere” means.

I realize now that before I started turning my life into games, I used to think that perseverance meant enduring or even suffering through a project, activity, or task until it was done.

But ever since playing and a little later formulating the 5 Minute Perseverance Game, my view on perseverance changed. It became fun and effortless.

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Putting the new perception into words

Three years after that, when I was writing a comprehensive work on turning life into fun games Self-Gamification Happiness Formula, I searched for quotes to start each of the chapters in the book and found the following to start the chapter on the 5 Minute Perseverance Game:

“Perseverance is not a long race; it is many short races one after the other.” — Walter Elliot

Finding this quote was like shedding light on and putting into words my changed perception of perseverance. It wasn’t something to endure anymore, but something to enjoy in short and fun sprints.

Here are the simple rules of the 5 Minute Perseverance Game:

  • You take a project or activity in the game. You pursue the project for at least five minutes a day. If you do it, you earn a point. If you don’t, then you lose the point to your procrastinating self. And if you persevere for less than five minutes, you got half a point, with the other half going to the procrastinating part of yourself.

To find out more about the game, I invite you to check out the little book about this game, 5 Minute Perseverance Game.

Here is what one of the book’s readers said about it on Amazon:

5.0 out of 5 stars Very good.
Reviewed in the United States on 13 June 2020
“This book takes a different approach to a cognitive behavioral technique for procrastination. It uses a game perspective, which I like, and good words to motivate and help me use this ‘game’. The way this book is worded, helps me for some reason. I started my project/game today, too, so I got that going for me. Which is nice. 🙂
Side note- I’ll probably play this game multiple* times a day, just to get me off my a$$. The ideas get me going. Thank you! I’ll start readin’ some of your other books, too. After 5 min on this task…”

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Special news and a special offer

Before I finish this little post, I have special news to announce. It has been five years since I published the 5 Minute Perseverance Game. It’s been quite an adventure since. When I wrote and published it, I didn’t know that I would write and publish seven more and have several others in progress and many ideas for other projects in the topics by now. I also didn’t know that I would create and publish an online course on motivating ourselves by turning life into fun games and would have over 190 students enrolled there.

To reflect the experience gathered, I will publish a 5-Year edition of the 5 Minute Perseverance Game this year. I will send the manuscript of this new edition to my editor in a week or two and I hope in March, I will publish it.

So, here is my offer to you.

If you buy the first edition of the 5 Minute Perseverance Game before the second is published and send me a copy of your receipt, then within the week of the second edition’s launch, I will send you a link where you will be able to download the second edition of the book as an e-book in a format of your choice.

Please send me your receipt to vib@optimistwriter.com or in a personal message through one of the channels listed on my contact page.

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Where to buy the book

To take a look at the book and buy it on Amazon, click on its title above or this image:

If you want to see where else you can buy it, then go to the book’s page on this website here.

I’m looking forward to hearing from you,

Have a beautiful and gameful day :D,

Victoria

What Is the Difference Between the Preferred Path to Your Goal and the Actual One

Self-Gamification, , , , , , , ,
(Image courtesy of the author)

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Have you ever tried to illustrate the preferred path to your goals geometrically?

Our stubborn concentration on the goals brings the illusion of this path as being a straight line. At least this straight line is our preferred path. “That would be so great if I would already have been there and achieved that,” we think.

But similar to the way on land to the airport from where we live, our lives are rarely straight lines.

Neither the paths to the wins in the games. They are never straight lines. Because — let’s admit it — straight lines are not very exciting. Yes, they are simple and straightforward, but they are not fun.

Over thousands of years, people shaped their games along with their experience of fun and put many fun obstacles and challenges on the path to the wins in those games.

Fun can rarely be found in a straight line to your goals in life either. At least not in the long run.

And thankfully, our brains don’t function linearly either. Especially the subconscious parts of our minds are very gameful and playful.

I invite you to observe your thought processes, their quirkiness, and how life unfolds with the eyes of a curious and passionate game designer and player. You will discover so many possibilities, as well as your resourceful and gameful powers.

To take the exploration of the enigmatic puzzle of your subconscious a step further, I invite you to read my new book Gameful Mind: Solve the Puzzle of Your Enigmatic Subconscious.

To take a look at the book and buy it on Amazon, click on its title above or this image:

If you want to see where else you can buy it, then go to the book’s page on this website here.

How to Use Doubts as Assets in Turning Life into Fun Games

Self-Gamification, , , , , ,
(Image by the author)

If you open any of my books or other resources on turning life into fun games, you will discover — among others — the recommendations to add some quirky and even silly rules, and not to forget to record your progress in any project or activity you want to pursue by giving yourself points, badges, and observing the levels you reach in your games.

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The doubts and skepticism

You might wonder if this could hinder you in progressing in what you want to accomplish.

You can have your doubts.

I must say, I “slid” into turning my life into games. I just followed my curiosity and became utterly engaged and even addicted. Now, I don’t escape into games or reading from my life, as I used to in the past. Instead, I turn everything in my life, including playing games and reading, but also everything else, including work, private life, relaxing, exercising, sleep, dealing with health issues, and so much more, into fun games for myself.

But I still resonate with the doubts. In fact, I discovered that any doubts in this approach are a brilliant way to test it. I must confess that I am in a constant testing phase of my self-motivational games. I don’t stop developing them, testing, then again tweaking their design, and playing again.

Besides, these doubts and experiences of those I know and myself in life have helped me write my first ever parable called Gameful Writing.

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What is Gameful Writing about?

Gameful Writing is about turning writing into fun games. It considers writing not from the point of view of possible genres but by how we treat it or think of it. Most of us deal with writing something every day, be it a novel we want to write but don’t manage, a blog post for the company we work for, a report, a thesis, an e-mail, or simply expressing ourselves to our loved ones — be it in writing or over a video or phone call. And we fear, resist, and overthink all those types of writing.

This little book acknowledges all these fears and overthinking because it features seven people who face them and manage to shift their focus from upsets into something uplifting and empowering them. They achieve it by turning their writing and lives into fun games — the Self-Gamification way.

This book is a work of fiction, but it features many real-life experiences from those I know and myself. Losing loved ones to illnesses and despair, grieving, letting other people grieve, forgiving ourselves, others, and even life itself for whatever grief they and we might have caused us, and instead find empowerment in the moment of now and with what we have available. These stories are braided strongly into the stories of turning writing and life into games.

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Your gain and savings from investing into turning your life into fun games

I invite you on this gentle and awakening journey of discovery to turning anything into something joyful for yourself.

Why is it worth it?

First of all, you will be able to save yourself the costs of drama and seriousness and instead gain resourcefulness and joy in whatever you set out to turn into fun games for yourself.

By reading the seven stories in this little book, you will see what you can gain from turning your life into fun games, and you will be able to join the characters in the book in this fun adventure of playing a fantastic game collection called life.

To take a look at the book and buy it on Amazon, click on its title above or this image here:

If you want to see where else you can buy it, then go to the book’s page on this website here.

How the Most Neglected Part of You — the Gameful and Playful One — Can Be the Most Helpful During the Pandemic and in Any Kind of Crisis

Self-Gamification, , , , , , ,
(Image by the author)

Can you remember yourself one year ago, in January 2020? What your thoughts and worries were about? You might have heard peripherally about an outbreak of an illness in China, but most people outside of the epicenters were busy worrying about their own daily ups and downs. I remember, I did.

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The long crisis

Then in March, the whole world was the epicenter of the COVID-19 pandemic. We all started with a state of shock, then slowly trying to find our way through it.

In the first month of the lockdowns everywhere, many thought that this trouble would not go for so long.

The editor and the cover designer for my books, Alice Jago, had an idea for me to write a piece called “Gameful Isolation” to show how my gameful approach to life could help in a time of crisis. She suggested writing a blog post so that it could go out quickly. But as I started jotting down what to write in it, I realized it should be a book, a small one, but still a book.

Alice and I worked on another book at that time, but we thought that the lockdown might end soon, so we made the Gameful Isolation our highest priority. Within less than four weeks from the idea, the book was written, revised multiple times, and published. And along with it, I had a series of videos for each of the chapters of the book, which I made available on YouTube and which you can also see here.

In summer 2020, with the situation getting a little better many might have had an impression that the crisis would soon be over. But here we are, a year after the pandemic started, and many of the countries are still in lockdown. So my little book Gameful Isolation is still relevant, and probably will always be, because we can’t avoid crises. They come in various shapes quite often. We might perceive even small challenges as big crises if we are upset and unhappy.

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Your gameful and playful self is resourceful

The main message of Gameful Isolation is tapping into our gameful and playful powers. I discovered that one of the main advantages of turning life into games is resourcefulness.

When we are in a tight space in a game, we don’t despair long but act quickly. We look around, assess the situation, and look for a small bit of solution with what we have at hand. Immediately after this quick assessment, we act. We don’t analyze our actions too long. We engage fully, and what is fun for us often acts as our compass in games.

I discovered that the same possibility is also open to us in real-life and tough times of a crisis. Asking myself the following question helps enormously:

“If this [challenge, project, task, activity, chore] was a game, how would I approach it as its designer or player?”

You might notice me sharing this question often because it has a fantastic potential to help us set the drama of the moment aside and tap into the resourcefulness, in which we tap so easily when playing games.

The next big help in a crisis is to take time and appreciate every step in our days with gameful rewards — points, badges, cool titles for the levels we set for ourselves in our self-motivational games, and so much more.

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How Gameful Isolation can help you

Here are these and other topics you can find in this little book with its e-book format being of a price of a coffee, and which can help in so many ways during our busy days full of homeschooling, work, household, and so much more:

  • How to motivate ourselves effortlessly in gameful and playful ways.
  • What tools we have when we are gameful and playful.
  • Many real-life role-playing games we play every day and which, if played deliberately, can help us on the way.
  • How to see our resistance to how our life unfolds non-judgmentally.
  • How to acknowledge and even appreciate our fears.
  • The uniqueness of each person’s situation.
  • How we can discover that what we experienced until now prepared us for the crisis we are in and tap into our resourcefulness.
  • Why and how to play real-life situations as if they were games, and what is the “gameplay loop” of turning life into fun games “game.”
  • How to gamefully and playfully, and most of all kindly, appreciate what we do, regardless of how we think of the value of what we do or manage through the day.
  • How to never give up turning life into fun games regardless of the circumstances.

To take a look at Gameful Isolation and buy it on Amazon, either click on its title throughout this post or click on this image below:

To find the links to the book on other online stores and view the videos mentioned above, check out the book’s page on this website here.

I wish you a beautiful and gameful day in any circumstance!

— Victoria