Tag Archives: #selfhelp

Join the Gameful Habits Launch Team

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Habits are both visible and invisible threads, sometimes representing and always connecting the projects, activities, tasks, challenges, or anything else we want to master or tackle. — Gameful Habits

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I will soon launch my book called Gameful Habits: How to Turn Your Daily Practices into Fun Games.

Since habits are always present in our lives and (often) minds, I decided to do the following. I invite you to participate actively in the launch of this book. It will be a standalone book in a collection (series) of books I call “Gameful Life.”

You will get:

  • A review (i.e., free) copy of the book in e-format of your choice (you can choose between epub, mobi, or pdf) as soon as the book is published or even a little earlier (as soon as I submit it to the online shops).

I’ll need your help with (depending on your preference, one or both of) the following:

  • Spread the word about the book on social media and/or other places (e.g., your blog or per e-mail) by using the marketing materials (visuals and quotes) I will prepare and share with you. You can also post thoughts of your own.
  • An honest review of the book on Amazon, other online stores online, and/or Goodreads.

Join now:

The book will be published within the coming two, three weeks. I will self-publish it without using a pre-order scheme. So, it will be available as soon as the retailers verify it and make it available for purchase.

Since the publishing date is only two, three, or maybe even less than two weeks away (I only need to make one more read-through), there might be only two handfuls of days (or even less) to join the team. Therefore, don’t wait, join, and learn how to have fun while turning habits into fun games.

Here is the description of the book:

Description of the Gameful Habits

Turn your daily practices into fun and exciting games.

Many people struggle to motivate themselves to start the day, work on a project, or maintain a healthy or otherwise beneficial habit. They consider many of their daily routines to be a necessary chore that they will never enjoy.

The pioneer of Self-Gamification — a unique approach to turning life into fun games — Victoria Ichizli-Bartels, has discovered another way for herself, and offers this possibility to others by sharing her experiences.

In this unconventional book on habits, Victoria shares the Super Sleeper game she created to ensure she got enough sleep, and how this success was extrapolated to the other habits and daily practices she wanted to develop.

Read Gameful Habits, and you will learn the three skill sets required to succeed in your self-motivational games, i.e. any habits, projects, challenges, tasks, or other activities turned into fun games. These skill sets are:

  1. Seeing yourself, the world around you, and your thought processes non-judgmentally, as an anthropologist would do;
  2. Identifying your dreams and goals, and taking action, one small and effortless step at a time, the kaizen way;
  3. Applying gamification; that is, seeing and treating whatever you are up to like a game, and learning to appreciate every step on the way with gameful rewards.

These skill sets, which you can easily put into practice immediately — along with the awareness that when you turn your life into fun games, you are both the player and the designer of these games — will help you turn happiness into a lifestyle, and health and other beneficial practices into exciting games that you can’t wait to design, play, and continue developing.

Join here:

To join, please send me an e-mail to vib@optimistwriter.com using the Subject line: “I want to join the Gameful Habits Launch Team” and let me know which e-mail address I should add to the team’s mailing list. Please note that I will also add your e-mail address to my general mailing list (Optimist Writer mailing list). You can unsubscribe from either or both at any time.

Thank you for taking the time to read this post!

I’m looking forward to hearing from you!

With best wishes,

Victoria

Free Speaking Game for the Gameful Healing

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Here is the fifth blog post in a series featuring videos on YouTube, where I read a paragraph from one of my motivational books and use it as a prompt to speak freely.

This idea was inspired by the free-writing exercise well-known among writers.  I used dice and timer to turn this free-speaking exercise into fun games. I hope you enjoy watching them and maybe trying out this gameful approach for yourself and tasks you want or need to tackle today.

In this video, I read from Gameful Healing: Almost a Memoir; Not Quite a Parable (Book 2 in Gameful Life series).

I am reading a paragraph from chapter “20. Fun.”

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

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The prompting paragraph from Gameful Healing

After exploring its various meanings while formulating and describing Self-Gamification, here is what I believe fun is. Fun equals full, wholehearted, and rewarding engagement.

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The next step

If you want to find out how I support myself in healing and dealing with my multiple health conditions by turning my life into fun games, I invite you to read Gameful Healing. It can support you on your journey of healing and well-being. Knowing that we are not alone is always helpful. To look at the book and buy it on Amazon, click on its title above or this image below:

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 six of my books there — one upon subscription or one-time support and five in the posts solely for subscribers. Gameful Healing will appear later this year or sooner upon explicit request from the subscribers.

I wish you a beautiful and gameful day!

One Minute Read from the 5-Year Edition of the 5 Minute Perseverance Game

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Today, I have a special addition to a series of blog posts featuring videos on YouTube, where I read from one of my motivational books for one minute.

My little book, 5 Minute Perseverance Game: Play Daily for a Month and Become the Ultimate Procrastination Breaker, will be soon five years old. Many things have happened since then. Without expecting that, turning life into fun games became a part of my career as a writer, coach, and consultant. To celebrate this occasion, I published a second edition of the book.

In this short video, I am reading the preface of the 5-Year Edition of the 5 Minute Perseverance Game. As with anything else in my life, I turned the reading into a fun little game, a 1 Minute Perseverance Game. ? I hope it is as much fun for you to watch as it was for me to make and play it.

Here is the excerpt I am reading in the video if you want to read along, prior, or afterward.

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Excerpt from the 2nd Edition of 5 Minute Perseverance Game

Welcome to the 5-year Edition of the 5 Minute Perseverance Game!

I can’t believe it’s been five years since I wrote and published this little book. It has been quite the adventure. Shortly after publishing, I began telling my friends about it, one of whom told me she had learned about the approach at its core at university. She called this technology “gamification.”

I thought — or maybe even asked out loud — “Gami-what?”

As soon as I got home, I researched the term online and was blown away by how much there was on gamification and the number of people applying game elements to “real-life contexts.”

Parallel with that, I discovered kaizen and started reading all I could on the subject. Step by step, I began to understand the three approaches or skill sets that formed the basis of the 5 Minute Perseverance Game: being present and studying ourselves as anthropologists do (Credits: Ariel and Shya Kane); breaking everything down into the smallest, most effortless bits possible (kaizen); and approaching everything with a gameful and playful attitude (gamification).

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Where to buy the book

To take a look at the new 5 Minute Perseverance Game and buy it on Amazon, click on its title or image above.

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 five of my books there — one upon subscription or one-time support and four in the posts solely for subscribers. The first edition of the 5 Minute Perseverance Game is already available, and I will add the new edition within the next couple of days.

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Have a beautiful and gameful day! ?

Free Speaking Game for the 5 Minute Perseverance Game

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Here is the first blog post in a new series featuring videos on YouTube, where I read a short paragraph from one of my motivational books and use it as a prompt to speak freely. This idea was inspired by the free-writing exercise well-known among writers.  I used dice and timer to turn this free-speaking exercise into fun games. I hope you enjoy watching them and maybe trying out this gameful approach for yourself and tasks you want or need to tackle today.

In this video, I read from my book, 5 Minute Perseverance Game: Play Daily for a Month and Become the Ultimate Procrastination Breaker.

I am reading a paragraph from the chapter “Duration of the Game.”

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

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The prompting paragraph from the
5 Minute Perseverance Game

You might have guessed — from many hints above — that according to the design of the 5 Minute Perseverance Game, each round takes one month. When you join in the game, you play every day of the month, including the weekends and holidays. But it is a game, and having FUN is one of the main goals here. So, what better way to spend 5 minutes on a weekend-day than having fun playing the 5 Minute Perseverance Game!?

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Special news

I hope you enjoyed watching me play this little spontaneous creativity game.

Before I finish this post, here is a reminder of the special piece of information I announced in the post “How to Persevere With Joy Instead of Effort.”

I am about to publish the 2nd (5-Year) edition of the 5 Minute Perseverance Game this year. I have to read it one more time, and then it will be good to go. So, I expect it to hit the online bookshelves this or latest next week. The new book will have fifty percent more content, updates, a template for a scoresheet, and links to multiple articles on turning life into games I published on Medium.

Here is its description revealed for the first time:

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Premier of the description for the new edition of the
5 Minute Perseverance Game

5 Minute Perseverance Game
A Self-Motivational Game to Help You Melt Your Procrastination
2nd Edition

Is there something you would like to do but feel you don’t have enough time or strength of will to achieve?

Is there a book you want to write, an instrument you want to play, a language you want to learn, or something completely different that you’ve wanted to accomplish for as long as you can remember?

If you really and seriously want to succeed in this dream project of yours, then play a game. Not a serious game. But a fun 5 Minute Perseverance Game. This short, personal and humorous game will help you melt your procrastination and win any challenge you face.

So, don’t wait any longer. Read this book and invite your procrastination to a round of the 5 Minute Perseverance Game. This little book has helped many turn a procrastinated project into a fun and engaging game.

This 5-year Edition offers even more. The text has been edited and enriched, several tactical variants added, and you will find a scoring sheet for the game you play with your procrastinating self.

In addition, most numbered chapters and sections offer links and short introductions to articles on the art of turning life into fun games. Together these articles have become the 5 Minute Perseverance Game “Wiki.” With this additional knowledge, you can transform this little game into a series of fun self-motivational games you can play and develop further every day.

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A special offer

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. The new book will be more expensive than its first edition through the considerably larger amount of content. So, I highly recommend that you use this offer if you would like to learn more about the 5 Minute Perseverance Game and other possibilities of turning your life into fun games.

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 5 Minute Perseverance Game and buy it on Amazon, click on its title 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.

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 five of my books there — one upon subscription or one-time support and four in the posts solely for subscribers. The first edition of the 5 Minute Perseverance Game is already available, and the new one will appear shortly after its publication.

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Have a beautiful and gameful day! ?