Practice #45 - Videogames Actually Helped Me

1 00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:05,000 These past couple days, I've been doing a lot of, 2 00:00:07,240 --> 00:00:11,880 not soul searching, but a lot of memory retrieving. 3 00:00:11,880 --> 00:00:14,740 And I've been really looking into my childhood, 4 00:00:14,740 --> 00:00:17,800 just trying to remember what my childhood was like, 5 00:00:17,800 --> 00:00:19,720 because if you're like most people, 6 00:00:19,720 --> 00:00:21,320 you actually don't remember it quite well. 7 00:00:21,320 --> 00:00:24,880 And it's because I have a theory that 8 00:00:24,880 --> 00:00:26,320 there's two different reasons. 9 00:00:26,320 --> 00:00:29,880 One, we don't really tell stories that often. 10 00:00:29,880 --> 00:00:31,800 Anymore in our society. 11 00:00:31,800 --> 00:00:35,240 And so, and I'm talking about personal stories, 12 00:00:35,240 --> 00:00:39,520 like just stories that happened in our lives 13 00:00:39,520 --> 00:00:42,240 and in our childhood, we don't really tell it that much. 14 00:00:42,240 --> 00:00:44,880 It's just not a norm anymore. 15 00:00:44,880 --> 00:00:47,560 And then it's also probably because 16 00:00:47,560 --> 00:00:49,400 ever since the Industrial Revolution, 17 00:00:49,400 --> 00:00:54,160 we've been, we kinda stopped just sitting around 18 00:00:54,160 --> 00:00:57,360 doing nothing, we kinda just stopped loafing around. 19 00:00:57,360 --> 00:01:01,240 And I say that because now instead of just sitting down 20 00:01:01,240 --> 00:01:03,560 and doing nothing and just thinking, 21 00:01:03,560 --> 00:01:06,720 we sit down and do nothing, but we're occupied. 22 00:01:06,720 --> 00:01:09,900 Like we're reading a book or we're watching a movie 23 00:01:09,900 --> 00:01:12,860 or we're playing video games or whatever it may be, 24 00:01:12,860 --> 00:01:15,440 we're still doing all these things. 25 00:01:15,440 --> 00:01:18,080 And we just don't really find the time anymore 26 00:01:18,080 --> 00:01:20,440 to just sit and think. 27 00:01:20,440 --> 00:01:23,040 Much less sit and think about our childhood. 28 00:01:23,040 --> 00:01:28,040 And so, I've been really making it like my mission 29 00:01:29,520 --> 00:01:32,160 to remember a lot about my childhood lately. 30 00:01:33,360 --> 00:01:35,080 And I have been talking about it a lot 31 00:01:35,080 --> 00:01:39,960 over the past couple days, but one thing, 32 00:01:39,960 --> 00:01:43,000 one massive lesson that I learned today was, 33 00:01:44,880 --> 00:01:49,880 I always thought that I ruined my life in middle school. 34 00:01:49,880 --> 00:01:51,600 And I always thought that I would have been 35 00:01:51,600 --> 00:01:55,920 so much better off, so much more progress made on my life 36 00:01:55,920 --> 00:01:59,800 if I didn't waste all my days playing video games. 37 00:02:01,600 --> 00:02:04,720 I always thought that I ruined my life playing video games. 38 00:02:07,080 --> 00:02:10,160 But then I was like trying to remember. 39 00:02:10,160 --> 00:02:12,880 Like I was doing this exercise that I heard about 40 00:02:12,880 --> 00:02:16,080 in the book called the Power Personal Storytime. 41 00:02:16,080 --> 00:02:19,080 And it was basically, we were doing this exercise 42 00:02:19,080 --> 00:02:21,920 it was basically where you take out a sheet of paper 43 00:02:21,920 --> 00:02:26,560 and you write down a vertical line in the middle of the sheet 44 00:02:26,560 --> 00:02:28,960 all the way up and down the paper. 45 00:02:28,960 --> 00:02:33,960 And you basically write down zero at the bottom 46 00:02:34,080 --> 00:02:35,560 and then your current age at the top 47 00:02:35,560 --> 00:02:38,640 and then you label the left side did not do 48 00:02:38,640 --> 00:02:40,280 and then the right side did do. 49 00:02:40,280 --> 00:02:42,520 And sorry if I sound weird, I'm shaking 50 00:02:42,520 --> 00:02:46,960 because I'm freezing and it's always cold in the basement. 51 00:02:46,960 --> 00:02:51,960 But pretty much you label the graph 52 00:02:54,480 --> 00:02:58,440 and then you divide the line based off 53 00:02:58,440 --> 00:03:00,200 of how many years you've lived. 54 00:03:00,200 --> 00:03:02,360 So for me, I'm 18. 55 00:03:02,360 --> 00:03:07,360 So I basically divvy up the line by years of two. 56 00:03:07,400 --> 00:03:11,240 So I say zero, two, four, six, eight, all the way to 18. 57 00:03:11,240 --> 00:03:15,200 And if you're older, you might wanna do years of three 58 00:03:15,200 --> 00:03:18,520 or years of five or 10, I don't know. 59 00:03:18,520 --> 00:03:20,800 But pretty much I divvy it up 60 00:03:20,800 --> 00:03:23,840 and then once you do that, you basically have to try 61 00:03:23,840 --> 00:03:28,840 and think back to all of the most impactful crossroads 62 00:03:30,240 --> 00:03:31,880 or decisions that you've made 63 00:03:31,880 --> 00:03:34,360 or someone has made for you in your life. 64 00:03:34,360 --> 00:03:37,560 So for example, some of the most impactful decisions 65 00:03:37,560 --> 00:03:42,560 that I wrote down where I started, I got an Xbox 66 00:03:42,560 --> 00:03:47,560 and then I COVID happened. 67 00:03:48,880 --> 00:03:50,360 So the pandemic happened. 68 00:03:50,360 --> 00:03:54,480 That was a huge impactful crossroad in my life. 69 00:03:54,480 --> 00:03:57,280 But it wasn't necessarily a decision I made. 70 00:03:57,280 --> 00:03:59,280 It was a decision made for me, 71 00:03:59,280 --> 00:04:03,600 whether it was like one person or like the world. 72 00:04:03,600 --> 00:04:07,560 Like it pretty much any crossroad, 73 00:04:07,560 --> 00:04:09,280 it doesn't have to be just like a decision. 74 00:04:09,280 --> 00:04:12,360 It's just like a crossroad in your life. 75 00:04:12,360 --> 00:04:16,040 So I got an Xbox, COVID happened. 76 00:04:17,000 --> 00:04:18,080 What else? 77 00:04:18,080 --> 00:04:22,400 I started going to the gym. 78 00:04:22,400 --> 00:04:24,880 I got cut from the soccer team. 79 00:04:24,880 --> 00:04:27,840 I started reading books. 80 00:04:27,840 --> 00:04:29,760 Like these were all huge crossroads. 81 00:04:29,760 --> 00:04:32,440 But the three that I wanna focus on right now 82 00:04:32,440 --> 00:04:35,800 are me playing Xbox. 83 00:04:35,800 --> 00:04:38,480 Like I started getting an Xbox in fifth grade. 84 00:04:38,480 --> 00:04:40,800 And then in junior years, 85 00:04:40,800 --> 00:04:42,520 when I decided not to go to college, 86 00:04:42,520 --> 00:04:44,000 that was another crossroad. 87 00:04:44,000 --> 00:04:47,560 And then senior year, I graduated early. 88 00:04:47,560 --> 00:04:50,200 So these are the three I wanna talk about. 89 00:04:50,200 --> 00:04:54,280 So then once you write down all of your, 90 00:04:54,280 --> 00:04:57,800 like your list of all of the crossroads, 91 00:04:57,800 --> 00:05:01,240 I basically, then I go through, 92 00:05:01,240 --> 00:05:03,240 like what you're supposed to do next is 93 00:05:04,440 --> 00:05:09,080 you go through and ask yourself, 94 00:05:09,080 --> 00:05:12,400 like you basically ponder these events. 95 00:05:12,400 --> 00:05:13,360 So you ask yourself, like, 96 00:05:13,360 --> 00:05:16,320 what were the circumstances that led up to this decision? 97 00:05:16,320 --> 00:05:17,200 Like, do I regret it? 98 00:05:17,200 --> 00:05:18,200 Do I not regret it? 99 00:05:18,200 --> 00:05:20,160 What would my life be like otherwise? 100 00:05:20,160 --> 00:05:25,160 Or like, what were the influences in other people's lives 101 00:05:25,360 --> 00:05:27,240 to help make this decision? 102 00:05:27,240 --> 00:05:29,880 Like all of these, like you basically just ponder it 103 00:05:29,880 --> 00:05:31,800 and ask like, why, why not? 104 00:05:31,800 --> 00:05:36,120 You like, you kind of just like get familiar with it. 105 00:05:36,120 --> 00:05:38,920 And so I'm sitting there in my room 106 00:05:38,920 --> 00:05:41,120 and I'm just pondering Xbox. 107 00:05:41,120 --> 00:05:44,320 I'm like, why did I get the Xbox? 108 00:05:44,320 --> 00:05:46,240 Like this ruined my life. 109 00:05:46,240 --> 00:05:48,640 Like I could have been so much better off. 110 00:05:48,640 --> 00:05:53,280 But then I just kind of let my mind drift onto, 111 00:05:53,280 --> 00:05:57,600 like I just let my mind bring up like the answers. 112 00:05:57,600 --> 00:05:59,360 Like why did I get the Xbox? 113 00:05:59,360 --> 00:06:02,120 Well, I got the Xbox because 114 00:06:05,400 --> 00:06:08,080 I had been, I had an Xbox 360. 115 00:06:08,080 --> 00:06:09,720 So by the way, if you don't know, 116 00:06:09,720 --> 00:06:12,200 there's an Xbox 360, which is the older one, 117 00:06:12,200 --> 00:06:14,840 and then the Xbox one, which was the newer one. 118 00:06:14,840 --> 00:06:19,840 And so I had an Xbox 360 and I played it, 119 00:06:21,600 --> 00:06:23,720 but I only played it when my friend came over 120 00:06:23,720 --> 00:06:25,240 and we would play together. 121 00:06:25,240 --> 00:06:27,480 So I probably played it like once a week 122 00:06:27,480 --> 00:06:28,920 or something like that. 123 00:06:28,920 --> 00:06:31,320 And we didn't play it all the time when he came over. 124 00:06:31,320 --> 00:06:34,400 We would just like play every once in a while. 125 00:06:34,400 --> 00:06:36,040 So I had the Xbox 360. 126 00:06:36,040 --> 00:06:40,200 And I knew that the Xbox one was so much better. 127 00:06:40,200 --> 00:06:43,400 And I knew that I couldn't play with my friends 128 00:06:43,400 --> 00:06:45,280 unless I had the Xbox one. 129 00:06:45,280 --> 00:06:49,000 And a bunch of my friends had the Xbox one. 130 00:06:49,000 --> 00:06:52,080 So, but not my best friend at the time. 131 00:06:52,080 --> 00:06:53,960 Like my best friend had, 132 00:06:56,640 --> 00:06:59,360 he didn't even have an Xbox at the time. 133 00:07:00,640 --> 00:07:04,560 And so I'm just like, oh, I want the Xbox, 134 00:07:04,560 --> 00:07:07,120 but I had the 360, so I don't really care 135 00:07:07,120 --> 00:07:09,800 to get it that much, even though all of my other friends 136 00:07:09,800 --> 00:07:10,920 had it. 137 00:07:10,920 --> 00:07:15,360 But then I, like Christmas season comes around 138 00:07:15,360 --> 00:07:18,240 and we're making our birthday or our Christmas list 139 00:07:18,240 --> 00:07:22,480 and my friend for, he wants to get the Xbox. 140 00:07:22,480 --> 00:07:24,360 So he decided to get the Xbox. 141 00:07:24,360 --> 00:07:26,160 And I was like, okay, now's the time. 142 00:07:26,160 --> 00:07:30,560 Now I have to get the Xbox because he was like the only person, 143 00:07:30,560 --> 00:07:33,560 like he was my best friend and I'm an introvert. 144 00:07:33,560 --> 00:07:35,560 So like when you have a best friend, 145 00:07:35,560 --> 00:07:40,080 that's like really your only great friend is what I'm trying. 146 00:07:40,080 --> 00:07:41,600 I don't know how to describe that. 147 00:07:41,600 --> 00:07:45,760 It's like you're, it's like the Pareto's principle. 148 00:07:45,760 --> 00:07:47,240 It's like the 80, 20. 149 00:07:47,240 --> 00:07:51,960 So if your best friend is like 80% of your friends 150 00:07:51,960 --> 00:07:55,520 and then the other people are just like 20%. 151 00:07:55,520 --> 00:07:58,800 Maybe like significant wise, I don't know. 152 00:07:58,800 --> 00:08:00,720 But pretty much my friends started, 153 00:08:01,680 --> 00:08:02,760 decided to get an Xbox. 154 00:08:02,760 --> 00:08:04,920 So I was like, okay, well now I got to get it 155 00:08:04,920 --> 00:08:06,640 because I don't want to be left out. 156 00:08:07,600 --> 00:08:09,440 And so I'm sitting there in my room, 157 00:08:09,440 --> 00:08:12,160 just remembering this memory. 158 00:08:12,160 --> 00:08:16,480 I realized that I had FOMO, fear of missing out. 159 00:08:18,600 --> 00:08:22,680 I didn't want to miss out from like what was going on 160 00:08:22,680 --> 00:08:23,820 on the Xbox. 161 00:08:25,240 --> 00:08:27,600 I didn't want to miss out while my friends were playing 162 00:08:27,600 --> 00:08:28,440 Xbox. 163 00:08:28,440 --> 00:08:31,880 And so that's something that I realized. 164 00:08:31,880 --> 00:08:36,120 I had FOMO, so then I made the decision to get an Xbox 165 00:08:36,120 --> 00:08:37,000 even though it was bad for me. 166 00:08:37,000 --> 00:08:39,020 I didn't know it was bad for me at the time, 167 00:08:39,020 --> 00:08:44,020 but in hindsight, FOMO, and then I got the bad thing. 168 00:08:44,840 --> 00:08:49,840 So fast forward, I quit Xbox, I sell it, 169 00:08:49,920 --> 00:08:51,120 I delete all my accounts. 170 00:08:51,120 --> 00:08:54,180 This was like last summer, so a couple months ago. 171 00:08:55,160 --> 00:08:59,760 And I did stop playing Xbox like a little bit while before 172 00:08:59,760 --> 00:09:01,360 that, but I didn't actually make the decision 173 00:09:01,360 --> 00:09:06,080 to sell my Xbox until a little while after I quit. 174 00:09:06,080 --> 00:09:11,080 So then I, so then after that, 175 00:09:11,600 --> 00:09:15,920 I, going back to the graph, like the original activity 176 00:09:15,920 --> 00:09:20,440 of writing down the vertical line and labeling all of your 177 00:09:20,440 --> 00:09:23,080 like crossroads in your life. 178 00:09:23,080 --> 00:09:27,880 So then once you do that, you, I don't know if this was 179 00:09:27,880 --> 00:09:30,480 like part of the activity, but what I ended up doing 180 00:09:30,480 --> 00:09:32,960 was I was like, how are these related? 181 00:09:32,960 --> 00:09:37,960 Like how did this crossroad impact the rest of my life? 182 00:09:38,200 --> 00:09:41,520 So I'm asking myself, how did this impact the rest 183 00:09:41,520 --> 00:09:42,360 of my life? 184 00:09:42,360 --> 00:09:46,480 Well, obviously it ruined my life because I would have been 185 00:09:46,480 --> 00:09:50,440 so much better off, but then I realized that it's not quite 186 00:09:50,440 --> 00:09:55,160 how I expected because then going back to the next 187 00:09:55,160 --> 00:09:59,520 crossroad of my life, or not the next one, but like the next 188 00:09:59,520 --> 00:10:04,160 one that I'm focusing on right now is I decided to not go 189 00:10:04,160 --> 00:10:05,120 to college. 190 00:10:06,160 --> 00:10:11,160 And so I'm thinking, how is this, how did getting an Xbox 191 00:10:11,200 --> 00:10:14,240 affect me not going to college? 192 00:10:14,240 --> 00:10:19,240 Well, I learned my lesson that just because I have FOMO 193 00:10:20,120 --> 00:10:23,840 doesn't mean I should go into it because it's bad for you. 194 00:10:23,840 --> 00:10:25,200 It could be bad for you. 195 00:10:25,200 --> 00:10:28,800 I learned my lesson from Xbox, from getting Xbox. 196 00:10:28,800 --> 00:10:32,200 So then I learned that lesson and then that prepared me 197 00:10:32,200 --> 00:10:35,360 for my future because I had FOMO for college. 198 00:10:35,360 --> 00:10:37,480 I didn't want to miss out on what people were doing 199 00:10:37,480 --> 00:10:42,320 at college, but then I was like, but it's not going to be 200 00:10:42,320 --> 00:10:43,160 good for me. 201 00:10:43,160 --> 00:10:45,720 Like it's probably not going to be good for me. 202 00:10:45,720 --> 00:10:48,720 Like I don't want to waste four years of my life working on 203 00:10:48,720 --> 00:10:51,280 like a career that I'm going to have to work for someone else 204 00:10:51,280 --> 00:10:52,760 for the rest of my life. 205 00:10:52,760 --> 00:10:56,360 I want to focus on my own things and actually work for 206 00:10:56,360 --> 00:10:58,720 myself and build my own future. 207 00:10:59,800 --> 00:11:02,800 So I realized that college is probably not good for me. 208 00:11:02,800 --> 00:11:04,720 So that prepared me. 209 00:11:04,720 --> 00:11:08,720 And obviously I didn't realize this lesson at the time, 210 00:11:08,720 --> 00:11:12,920 but me pondering, me sitting there in my room, 211 00:11:12,920 --> 00:11:14,840 questioning how are these connected? 212 00:11:15,720 --> 00:11:18,560 Well, it prepared me to not go to college. 213 00:11:18,560 --> 00:11:23,080 And then I'm like, how did Xbox connect to me graduating 214 00:11:23,080 --> 00:11:24,560 early from high school? 215 00:11:24,560 --> 00:11:29,560 Well, the decision to graduate early from high school, 216 00:11:29,960 --> 00:11:34,440 senior year, cut senior year short, which is probably the 217 00:11:34,440 --> 00:11:39,440 most fun of the four years out of all of them, 218 00:11:39,760 --> 00:11:44,760 the decision to cut the most exciting year off short 219 00:11:45,920 --> 00:11:50,560 in high school to pursue my passions, 220 00:11:50,560 --> 00:11:55,000 even though I may fear missing out on things. 221 00:11:57,000 --> 00:11:59,840 Getting an Xbox and the lesson I learned from that 222 00:12:06,040 --> 00:12:10,080 prepared me for what was to come. 223 00:12:10,080 --> 00:12:15,080 It prepared me for graduating early. 224 00:12:15,160 --> 00:12:19,000 And I then connected it all together because, 225 00:12:19,000 --> 00:12:22,320 and I basically kind of like confirmed all of this because, 226 00:12:23,920 --> 00:12:26,840 or I realized that this is actually a huge advantage. 227 00:12:26,840 --> 00:12:29,760 I always thought that Xbox was terrible for me. 228 00:12:29,760 --> 00:12:31,480 I always thought that I'd be so much better off 229 00:12:31,480 --> 00:12:33,520 if I never played video games. 230 00:12:33,520 --> 00:12:37,520 I thought that I would be so good, so progressed 231 00:12:37,520 --> 00:12:40,640 in myself improvement in my life and everything, 232 00:12:40,640 --> 00:12:42,760 if I never played video games. 233 00:12:42,760 --> 00:12:46,160 But now I'm kind of changing my mind and I'm thinking, 234 00:12:46,160 --> 00:12:48,440 well, I needed to go through that to prepare me 235 00:12:48,440 --> 00:12:52,280 for what was to come because I was talking to my friend 236 00:12:52,280 --> 00:12:54,920 at school like a couple months ago, 237 00:12:54,920 --> 00:12:56,800 telling him that I was graduating early. 238 00:12:56,800 --> 00:12:59,600 And he was like, whoa, I kind of want to do that, 239 00:12:59,600 --> 00:13:03,480 but don't you worry about like missing out? 240 00:13:04,440 --> 00:13:06,920 And I didn't think anything of it at the time, 241 00:13:06,920 --> 00:13:11,000 but in hindsight, I was thinking, 242 00:13:11,000 --> 00:13:14,280 like I was pondering that memories. 243 00:13:14,280 --> 00:13:18,160 And I realized that this guy was not prepared. 244 00:13:18,160 --> 00:13:21,880 He didn't have that, like he didn't go to the bottom 245 00:13:21,880 --> 00:13:25,040 of the pit like I did playing video games. 246 00:13:25,040 --> 00:13:28,360 So he wasn't prepared to make the decision, 247 00:13:28,360 --> 00:13:32,120 the tough decision to stop going to high school. 248 00:13:32,120 --> 00:13:34,080 He wasn't prepared to make that decision, 249 00:13:34,080 --> 00:13:36,160 even though it may have been good for him. 250 00:13:36,160 --> 00:13:46,840 So playing Xbox actually like dramatically improved my life.