LEVELLING UP

Many times in your pursuits of goals, you hit brick walls that stop you from advancing. 

This is especially so when what you are trying to achieve is bigger than what you are capable of accomplishing at the point. This situation can be frustrating and growth impeding. However, you can still achieve a state where you become bigger than your problems; you only need to level up.

Levelling up is a concept that comes from games. When you play games like RPGs, MARIO, MMORPGs, or just games in general, you will be familiar with it. In RPGs, it is normal to run into a situation where you can’t proceed forward because your characters are not strong enough to defeat the enemies. This typically happens when you are advancing to a new area; a new level where you are exposed to stronger enemies than the ones you combated against before. At this point, you usually get knocked out or battered down. It’s like that in life too.

However, this doesn’t stop you from progressing, does it? No. What do you do now? You start training and leveling up the characters. When they level up, they gain an increase in their stats, such as hit points, coins, etc. The more hit points, the more damage your player can withstand; strength, defence, dexterity, intelligence, luck and so on. Sometimes the levelling up even results in your character acquiring a new ability/special move/technique (or limit break for Final Fantasy fans) that adds a whole new dimension to what it can do! With this increased prowess, winning over the enemies becomes a piece of cake and you are now able to advance to the next stage of the game.

So how do you level up in real life to conquer your problems/goals? The most fundamental aspect of levelling up is to gain experience. The more experience you gain, the stronger you become, the closer you get to levelling up.

In games, the safest way to gain experience is to start off with the enemies that are weaker. Keep fighting them again and again and you will gain experience in the process. If you mirror this to real life, this means tackling smaller variants of the goal you are trying to achieve. If you are trying to write a book, go for a chapter first. If you are trying to increase your income or sale by $10,000, go for a smaller goal of $1,000. These goals that you pursue should be goals which are well manageable within your current capabilities. Just by working toward these goals, you are already gaining experience.

Assuming everything goes well, you will achieve the smaller goal. While you can try to aim the same goal again, you will discover that it’s now easier than the first time since you already know the strategy, the steps that are required and how to go about doing this. You already know the potential barriers you will face along the way and how you can counteract them to move forward. Just trying to achieve this goal again isn’t going to give you many experience points (if at all), since you are already coming from a place of higher experience and stronger capabilities.

So, instead of trying to achieve the smaller goal again, move on to a more challenging goal: Increase the target you are looking to achieve, shorten the timeline, intensify the experience and raise the bar a little. With the larger goal on hand, work toward it until you achieve it. When you finally achieve it, you would have gained more experience and levelled up! Rinse and repeat this cycle with even more challenging goals. In no time, you would have reached a sufficiently high level that enables you to eliminate your original goal with no problem. 

Start thinking about the goals in your life which you might be having difficulty meeting. How can you level yourself up to become better and stronger? How can you level yourself up such that the obstacles no longer become obstacles? How can you level up  that you can conquer goals with relative ease? Begin to work now. Remember, the more you do, the better you get at it.

Also read: How to Stop Complaining, Overcome Procrastination, Stay Motivated, Be Creative, Use Your Mind and The Patterns that Yield

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