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The Freedom To Play At A Whole New Level

Flaws give us challenges that force us to be creative and get around them in order to progress.

Sheree Rehema, The Art of Character Development

More specifically, applied to our own lives, it is the flaws of our “character” that give us challenges that force us to be real creative and get around around them in order to progress. We get around them by creatively stepping out of our own way and allowing our larger, innate sense of Self to grow and emerge.

That’s because these flaws often arise from our misinterpretation and misperception of reality, ourselves, and even what it means to be a human being.

For example, right now in our rapidly changing world, many people are screaming for the “right” to maintain their “freedoms.” But they don’t realize their perceived sense of “freedom” is just a construct, a cage, of their identity.

In other words, they not screaming for “freedom.” They’re screaming for the safety of the cage (i.e. their perceived sense of reality as a construct) that gave them the illusion of freedom. That dependency. That addiction. That’s what they’re screaming for.

This is why I find Life as an MMORPG so enlightening and revealing as a metaphor. Effectively the first half of our lives, we are role playing and playing a game of what society expects us to be and yet we think we’re “independent” as “adults” within society.

It is only when this artificial construct that we think is “reality” begins to break down, like an outdated GPS, and we’re forced to face a different reality with different challenges, do we truly “level up” and go beyond the extrinsic motivations and expectations of society and discover other intrinsic motivations deeper within ourselves, thus forcing us to truly become independent in a psychologically mature sense.

In doing so, we no longer accept the prepackaged “roles” and “game” that is predefined and prescribed by society to “play” and instead discover our own unique roles that we can play at a whole new “level” and within a whole new world.

By Nollind Whachell

Questing to translate Joseph Campbell's Hero’s Journey into The Player’s Handbook for The Adventure of Your Life, thus making vertical (leadership) development an accessible, epic framework for everyone.

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