Everything Is A Game

Let’s talk about the first pillar and this is an important one.

Everything is a game.

What does that mean.

To me this is one of the most important foundations for being an efficient learner.

It is something so profound that has had a tremendous impact on my life in a positive way.

You see when we frame our mindset to think that everything is a game we inadvertently allow two things

to happen in our lives.

The first one is this idea of a growth mindset.

Now the opposite of a growth mindset is called a fixed mindset.

And what we want to have to be efficient learners is a growth mindset and that is that we believe talent

intelligence aren’t just gifts that we’re born with everything that you learn is trainable.

Everything you do or things you want to learn can be learned.

The idea is that with enough effort and strategy you can get better at anything now.

Yes I know that we learned that not all of us start in the right place and some are more advantageous

than others.

Maybe we go to a better school maybe we have better physical talent but at the end of the day when it

comes to learning and using our brains everything is trainable and that’s what a growth mindset is a

growth mindset is the belief that intelligence can be developed and students with a growth mindset understand

this.

They can get smarter through hard work and they use of an effective strategy or strategies as opposed

to a growth mindset.

Some people have a fixed mindset and that’s the belief that intelligence is a fixed trait that is set

in stone.

At birth you’re either born smart or you aren’t.

And those are the type of people that make excuses right.

They believe that they cannot get smarter so they avoid doing things that make them look dumb.

And this essentially leads students to avoid challenges and tasks that actually help them grow.

Instead they just give up as soon as they struggle.

But when we hold a growth mindset when we think hey everything’s a game we’re just improving constantly.

People can now look at the world around them as an exciting place to grow and embrace these challenges

and opportunities that come your way.

This is what we need to develop mastery in her book Mindset by Carol Dweck.

She talks about this idea of growth versus fixed mindset when a fixed mindset person approaches a challenge

he or she usually thinks Hey will I look smart or stupid while doing this instead of when a growth mindset

approaches a challenge he or she usually thinks.

How might I learn and grow from this challenge a fixed mindset person when they encounter an obstacle

or something difficult is going to say I’m not smart enough to do this I can’t do this versus a growth

mindset person will think I’m not smart enough to do this.

Yet when we view everything as a game we realize that we learn we adapt our player in this world gets

more and more experience points as they encounter challenges.

So that’s the first thing that happens.

This idea of a growth mindset when we view everything as a game.

The second is this idea of control over life or what psychologists call locus of control what does that

mean in psychology.

Locus of control means to what degree people believe that they have control over outcomes and events

in their lives.

People that have a strong internal locus of control or believe that they have a lot of control over

their lives believe events in their lives derive from their own actions.

For example when you receive a test score somebody with a strong locus of control usually blame themselves.

They know that it was their fault for not doing well on a test and they know that they could probably

improve and they need to put in a better effort next time somebody who has a lower locus of control

or what we call an external locus of control tend to blame factors outside of themselves such as the

teachers.

The teacher didn’t teach me well enough.

This course didn’t teach me well enough or I didn’t have time because I was so busy with other things

in my life.

They blame everything around them and never blame themselves when you start realizing that you have

control over your life.

When you start realizing that everything is a game and just like in a game we control our player we

control our destiny.

You are better prepared to be an efficient learner exams and tests suddenly don’t mean anything.

Grades don’t really mean anything right.

Sure they give you feedback but at the end of the day all of that grades and tests and exams are is

a system.

We’re just learning how to optimize a system and we get a score back if we believe that we have control

over our lives that we have a growth mindset that we can improve our intelligence.

This is all just a game.

This is our player in a game that has failed a few times and just gets back up and improves each time.

Because we learned that nobody remembers your failures.

I remember my very first university test I got 10 percent on that exam but nobody really cares about

that do they.

You only need to be successful a few times in life and the rest of the times you can fail.

And when you start viewing everything as a game it changes your whole perspective to learning instead

of thinking I’m not smart enough to do this.

It becomes I’m not smart enough to do this yet and the first step to going from a fixed mindset to a

growth mindset is to realize that your brain can change and this is something that we’re going to explore

in the science of the brain.

But just as a sneak peek.

Yes your brain actually grows and changes throughout your life.

One famous study was done on taxi drivers in London and researchers noticed that the more times a London

taxi driver has spent driving a taxi in London the larger a region of their brain associated with spatial

awareness and memory which was the hippocampus.

We’ll get to that had actually grown.

So what they learned is that as these drivers drove more and understood their landscape more the roads

more region of that brain actually grew and more and more studies are showing that brains can actually

adapt.

You can speed up your brain circuits and that’s the thing.

Everything is a game isn’t necessarily just a mindset.

It’s the truth.

Our brains grow our brains adapt and if we believe that and if we start to realize that the way we look

at learning really shifts learning new skills is a great tangible way to realize that you have control.

For example even the act of learning how to change a tire on a car actually increases your mindset that

you have control over our lives.

Instead of seeing events as things that happened to us they become simply challenges that we need to

overcome.

So remember everything is simply just a game.