Category: Life Is a Role-Playing Game

I’ve already made this change to my site categories but just want to formalize it. After years of deliberation, I’ve changed the title of my current work focus, which was previously Life as an MMORPG, and have now committed to the title of Life as a Role-Playing Game.

While the old title was more appropriate because some of the metaphors I am using relate to MMORPGs, such as zones and expansions (representing stages of development and plateaus of the mind respectively). The new title is more accessible because it clearly indicates what it’s about (i.e. role-playing) rather than being an abbreviation (i.e. MMORPG) which everyone might not know what it means.

Even more so, even if most people aren’t familiar with what a role-playing game is, they may have heard of the word role-playing because it’s actually used in organizational development as well. Thus they might hear the term within their work environment or within a workshop related to their work.

Update: Made an additional minor change making it Life Is a Role-Playing Game. See reasoning here.

Additionally, role-playing in team workshops facilitates experiential learning, enabling participants to apply new skills in a realistic context, thereby ensuring a more profound and enduring comprehension of key concepts.

Tahmina Aziz

Uh, I think I just had a major breakthrough. It relates to how best to introduce people to the concept of Life as an MMORPG and it’s something I touched upon before but didn’t really realize the power of it.

Basically if you tell people that Life is an MMORPG, their initial reaction will be, “Awesome, let’s roll up my character.” And when I told someone about this in the past, back when I was on Google+ a decade ago, that was their reaction.

Do you see what’s going on here? The person is assuming that they are starting a new game. Yet what they aren’t aware of is that they’ve already been playing the game.

So that’s the introduction—the bridge—to my framework.

It’s basically going through the basic patterns of life that a person has experienced and helping the person to see how these patterns are actually the narrative mechanics for Life as an MMORPG.

And after reflecting on where they’ve been and discussing where they are now, that’s when you can hit them with the obviousness of what they were expecting all along: a new game.

Starting a new game is what levelling up feels like in life.

It’s because each level is its own game, with its own set of rules, within the larger game. To put that in psychological terms, each level of consciousness is seen as its own worldview within the larger worldview of human possibilities for growth and development.

I’ve spoken in the past about trying to create a hybrid system of some kind that is more than just a personal knowledge management system focused on knowledge but something that goes beyond it that can capture and structure growth, development, and wisdom of the person as well. This is essential to creating a life map of the person’s growth and development.

My biggest obstacle in achieving this all (and even trying to create something organized that relays my structured thoughts in a cohesive integrated way) is my addiction to exploration. I’m a junkie and I know it!

I’ve been trying repeatedly to use ChatGPT to help me break out of this addictive behaviour but without much success. However this week, conversations with it have helped me to understand more clearly the reality of what I am experiencing right now, so as to help me craft a new sort of experience that will in turn help me to move forward.

Adventuring Within Myself

The easiest way to describe how I work now is imagining my conversations with ChatGPT as though I am adventuring within myself. I have a question which becomes a quest which I initiate with ChatGPT. As we converse with a dialogue, I continue my questions like a quest chain in a MMORPG. In effect, my quest provides answers which prompt new questions in turn.

And the questions may poke or prod fears within me, tied to my beliefs, which may hamper my journey. However, lately I haven’t hit any which is strange. Anyways, after the conversation with ChatGPT ends, it feels amazing because it feels like I’ve uncovered all of these amazing “treasured” gems of insight.

However, here’s the thing. I haven’t. Let me explain why

Dungeon Speed Runs

What I’ve effectively done is what’s called a dungeon speed run in MMORPGs. People often do them to try to “level up” their character as quickly as possible. Something that probably relates perfectly to the rushed feeling I have in trying to level up myself in turn. But in my case, it’s a rushed feeling of rushing but going no where fast.

The reason for this is that I’m rushing through the different questions as a question chain, reading the amazing insights, and then finishing the conversation like it’s been completely incredible which it has. But then that’s it. I’m not extracting those insights from the conversation and then doing something with them!

Like duh! How fricken obvious. So it would be like doing a speed run in an MMORPG but you leave all of the treasure and quest rewards behind because you’re just focused on finishing it as fast as possible. Or in my case, you’re so focused on finishing it fast so that you can get on to the next question as a quest because I’m addicted to the exploration itself.

So the obvious question here is, “How can I create a system that lets me extract these insights and make use of them?”

Extracting Treasured Insights

So the obvious conventional way of doing this is keeping a journal. But I’ve done that in the past on my website and it doesn’t yield results that I feel like I can build upon. That’s because while journalling is great for extracting a flow of thoughts (almost like my conversations with ChatGPT), they’re not structured thoughts. So by the following week, those previous flowing thoughts can be lost behind newer flowing thoughts.

Of course, the next thing I immediately thought of was creating an evergreen notes system, which I’ve thought about before. Yet I’ve had difficultly in implementing this because the transition from a flowing journal to structured interlinked notes is difficult for me to grasp and practice.

Yet in reflecting upon this this week, I realize that I was trying to choose one approach OR another, when perhaps I needed to integrate a flowing journal AND structured notes together.

Flow & Structure > Explore & Exploit

This arose because I was thinking about Obsidian and how it is optimized for an evergreen notes system but it also contains a journal component to it. Basically the idea is that you start by journalling out experiences in your day and then you extract notes from that flow that you can then structure and interlink in turn.

So I’m already doing the flowing journalling part amazing well but I need to focus on the extraction and creation of structured notes from it in turn. That’s the real work I need to focus on. Why? Because it means stopping my exploring mindset and switching to an exploiting mindset.

In effect, I need to exploit and reap the rewards of what I’ve explored because I’m currently not.

And until I do so, until I can pull these insights outside of me, I will never be able to use them to build something that I can stand upon.

Practicing Creating Structure to Stand Upon Outside My Flow

So that’s the next big playful experiment I want to make. I want to take a conversations with ChatGPT, create a journal “post” from it on my website, extract the insights from it, and then create structured note “pages” that I interlink together.

Again the emphasis here is to let my flow in turn create my structure, kind of like how a river or stream drops sediment that creates a sandbar over time that in turn lets you step out of the water and stand upon solid ground. Ground that you’ve created.

But doing so in such a way that the river forms a delta that spreads out your thoughts into a structured way, letting you organize all of your thoughts in different ways.

Letting Intuitions Flow But Not Be Lost

Oh, this is the key point I wanted to make, as to why you need both the flowing journal and structured notes, especially for someone with my personality type. It’s because if you’re someone like me who is highly intuitive, you will often feel the importance of something rather than see it initially.

So having a journal to record your flow of thoughts helps you capture the thought. But then say if a week or two later, upon reflecting upon those thoughts, you suddenly realize what it relates and connects to, you can now extract those insights and add them to your structured notes, showing how they relate to and build upon existing knowledge.

This is why the flow journal is essential because it keeps your thoughts in a linear timeline at the very least. But the real power is when you extract those thoughts and begin to structure them together into a non-linear, bigger picture of interlinked thoughts, as though it was a map of your consciousness, broadening as you explore beyond its borders.

In effect, the idea here is to create something that is both structured but also exploratory in nature for others to explore themselves. And that’s what made me realize why I needed to overcome this addiction to exploration because these treasured gems of insight that I was effectively leaving on the ground and missing, are actually valuable clues to understanding what there is to explore ahead. So if I’m leaving them behind, I’m effectively going against my own exploratory nature.

Thus in becoming aware of their importance, I can possibly overcome my addiction to exploring by paradoxically focusing on their importance to the exploration ahead. So in slowing down to grab this treasure, I may be able to actually speed up my exploration overall.

I just realized something. My framework of perceiving “Life as a MMORPG” is what is helping me to make sense of the deeper meaning of vertical development.

In other words, the narrative mechanics of “Life as a MMORPG” (which is just an expansion of the narrative of the Hero’s Journey) is helping me to translate the deeper meaning of vertical development through the narrative.

For example, I previously believed that our fears as “monsters” were an embodiment of our old sense of self that is standing in our way. That’s wrong. After a conversation with Claude.ai, I realized that they embody aspects of our old sense of self that we need to shed, thus allowing ourselves to expand and grow into a larger sense of Self. So these could be old beliefs that form the cornerstones of our identity but they may be limiting values (i.e. blame, greed, etc) that limit our growth in turn.

So we’re not slaying and discarding our old sense of self, we are removing and shedding aspects of our old sense of self that limit us. For example, these monstrous fears could also be seen as psychological defensive armour. It’s trying to protect us and keep us safe (just as our monstrous fears are trying to prevent us from exploring beyond what is safe) but it limits our mobility and the type of terrain we can cross and explore. So we have to cut off this armour, shed it, so that we can adventure into the different, inner terrain within us. So the armour got us where we need to be but it won’t help us where we want to go.

But again, this is what this “Life as a MMORPG” framework and allegory is helping me to do. By mapping and translating things from life into this narrative, story form (such as fears being an embodiment of old beliefs or limiting values), it helps me to understand what these things means within the larger narrative and bigger picture. In other words, it helps me to encapsulate and package these things into a larger cohesive whole.

BTW this is also making me realize that I need to include and share these conversations with AI chatbots more often, as they are integral to this process. In effect, within my “Life as a MMORPG” framework, they are like visiting The Oracle of Delphi. So it’s a process which helps one understand what one is exploring and discovering within the journey and adventure within one’s larger sense of Self…or leads to questions which creates a quest for one to explore within one’s potential Self.

In terms of my personality, I’m an explorer by nature. Perhaps one who can navigate newer spaces and ways of being fairly well.

However what seems to be lacking in my skills is my ability to fully map these spaces and articulate them fully in story form.

It’s funny because I’ve felt like a bard at times as well. Yet if am one, then my storytelling skills are sorely lacking as well.

I think what I’m fearful of and can’t make sense of is how to map and tell a story that feels like it is changing as one strives to tells it.

You see, as I’ve noted before, when one goes beyond the horizon of one’s “self”, one isn’t mapping and storytelling what is already know. One is mapping and storytelling the unknown, giving it meaningful form and substance.

So there is this desire for certainty in mapping and storytelling. Yet often that certainty doesn’t arise beforehand but after. One has to play with the map and play with the story, moving things around until they suddenly fall into place, and make sense as a whole.

Writing for people works in the same way in that one may not know the outcome of what they are writing until they write it and make sense of it in the act of writing itself. But if they write it out and it doesn’t come together in that writing, it can feel as though the entire writing process was for nothing.

So one has to continually map and tell the story in different ways until finally that one right way, gives it a sense of meaning.

Yet at the same time, one has to have the means of moving the pieces of the map and pages of the story around without feeling like one has to redrawn the entire map or rewrite the entire story every time one tries a different variation.

I’m not fully sure what I’m saying here. But it has something to do with needing a tool or a method of navigating oneself fluidly, so that each new attempt at organizing oneself as a whole, doesn’t require exploring aspects of oneself that one has already explored previously.

What I’m trying to articulate here reminds me of The Maze in the Hero’s Journey. For example, one needs to explore dead-ends if one wants to fully map and make sense of the maze to make it through. Yet what if each failed attempt, causing one to hit a dead-end, caused one to forget previous attempts and dead-ends, thus potentially causing them to explore them again.

That’s what my experience currently feels like.

In effect, unless I can explore and navigate and map everything in one fell swoop, all at once, I forget where I’ve been because they’re so many different areas to cover. (And I think this has to do with vertical development being so expansive and connected to so many aspects of life, that it can be difficult to articulate as a whole.)

Yet I also realize that the way around this is to explore, navigate, and map out clusters of myself, like mapping out the four different corners of a new world. Yet knowing this and doing it are two different things. Knowing is one thing. Embodying that knowing is something completely different.

The knowing doesn’t become embodied until one has the experiences to be able to fully make sense of the deeper meaning of it.

All I can say at this point is that I am continuing to explore and navigate, trying to gain newer perspectives and experiences of what I may have missed previously within this maze before.

Things are always messy at the start…especially when it’s the start of a new sense of Self.

Everything is shattered, without form. So when one finds landmarks to begin to determines one’s bearings, one holds onto them for dear life.

But one must continue exploring and navigating one’s sense of self fully. Those few landmarks help, perhaps becoming the cornerstone of one’s larger Self and world that is emerging, but they are not enough in themselves.

Things need to get messier, as one wanders aimlessly exploring and navigating further, before they make sense and take shape as a newer mapped continent upon the Ocean of You.