***

Here is the second blog post in a series featuring videos on YouTube, where I read from one of my motivational books for one minute.

In this video, I read from the Self-Gamification Happiness Formula: How to Turn Your Life into Fun Games.

The extract I am reading is from chapter 11, “Seeing and Designing What We Do as Games,” section 2, “Why game design is essential for everyone,” on page 251.

Here it is if you want to read along, prior, or afterward.

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Excerpt from the Self-Gamification Happiness Formula

And here is another assignment for you: If you use a calendar, a planner or project book in paper format or have all of your to-do lists under one heading, then open it at the beginning and write your name, followed by the words “Game Book.” Feel free to have more than one game book, depending on what you record there. I use three paper planners, two of which are game books (which I will address several times more [in this book. For example,]):

• “To-do Game Book,” where I record and maintain to-do lists daily (the previous name for it was “Deadlines and Plans Game Book”), and
• “Points and Stars Game Book,” where I develop and fill in the feedback system for my self-motivational games.

***

The next step

To take this game to the next level, I invite you to read the book. To look at Self-Gamification Happiness Formula and buy it on Amazon, click on its title or the 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 the beginning of February, the Self-Gamification Happiness Formula is one of the three. 

Enjoy your day and let it be gameful!

***

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.

***

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.

***

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!