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Manomanman · 06-29-2009, 04:55 PM

Hey Steve,

I posed the original question in the business forum because I've been going to school for 22 years now and the "carrot" has never materialized. I told my parents I was going to quit grad school next year (6th year) and they sort of flipped out. We go our whole lives believing in the lie that a happy ending awaits us if we just obey (our teachers, our bosses, our parents), and then we end up battling the emotional fallout that arises from the dissonance between our need to grow (get the HELL out of school and do something meaningful), and our need to be secure (i.e. be obedient, be safe, and get the next cookie/degree).

I read about 100 of your blogs in February, changed my perspective on life, and began writing my own blog content. I fell into my (hopefully last) depression and started gaming in April (due to a misalignment with my subconscious sense of self and my physical body), and snapped out 7 days ago. I have VERY limiting belief that real-life will always be emotionally painful, and the game world exists as an escape from the painful real world. This is in part because I had the Steve Pavlina prison experience --- except that I didn't actually commit the crime. (We have a frighteningly high number of things in common - I chalk that up to the fact that we fit into an evolving-human archetype that clashes with the "herd").

My brother gave me the perfect analogy for why people can't seem to snap out of their fear-based thinking about finances: When people get lost in the wilderness, it's not lack of food, water, or shelter that kills them. They are typically surrounded by abundance. What kills people is the fact that they give up hope of being rescued and find a good place to die. They fail to load up the appropriate perceptual software (i.e. seeing abundance) for the environment that they're in.

The entrepreneurial world is a jungle. Domesticated pet-people, like myself, have no idea what to do when we're taken away from the safety of our pet-masters (the bosses, the teachers, the authority figures telling us what to do, and scolding us when we do it wrong). We fail to see basic opportunities right in front of our faces, because of our psychological focus (namely, "Just get a job.") In reality, our thinking translates to, "Sacrifice freedom for security."

When I posed the original question, I had about 100g in my MMO. By the time I quit, I had over 600g playing the Auction House. Top-level-epic-uber items costs about 30g, and I only needed 7 of them. So I started buying things for people, and playing with others more. The moment I stopped playing the AH, I snapped out of my addicted state. It wasn't a large amount of gold I was really after, it was the challenge of making it (learning/growth), and the glory I could bask in with the new-found power from the items I bought. In other words, MMO's have been fulfilling a need that I'm not meeting in real-life, the need to make money FOR MYSELF in order to put myself on the path of growth. (i.e. $$$ allow me to play the game on my own terms, not the guild master/boss's terms).

I'm using the analogy of making money in the AH to help me build the mental architecture necessary to launch my real-life money-making schemes. In the game, I was making about 1g per transaction at the start, but I KNEW I could do better. So I started speculating on certain crafting items, and ended up making 10-20g each resale. I just had to have the cajones to step it up a notch and take that ONE intelligent risk: my finances exploded.

The most important lesson I've learned from the game is that once you've calibrated yourself to think adaptively about a new environment (such as the wilderness, the auction house, or in this case, the entrepreneurial world), all you see is opportunity rather than danger.

If I had one piece of advice for people contemplating making this kind of transition, it would be to study Do It Now by Steve Pavlina until you can recite it from memory, and then to bring it back out on the first of every month to make sure you're still running the mental software. That article is like a wilderness survival handbook for the entrepreneurial world.

06-29-2009, 04:55 PM	#26 (permalink)
Manomanman Senior Member Join Date: Mar 2009 Location: Southern California Posts: 548	Hey Steve, I posed the original question in the business forum because I've been going to school for 22 years now and the "carrot" has never materialized. I told my parents I was going to quit grad school next year (6th year) and they sort of flipped out. We go our whole lives believing in the lie that a happy ending awaits us if we just obey (our teachers, our bosses, our parents), and then we end up battling the emotional fallout that arises from the dissonance between our need to grow (get the HELL out of school and do something meaningful), and our need to be secure (i.e. be obedient, be safe, and get the next cookie/degree). I read about 100 of your blogs in February, changed my perspective on life, and began writing my own blog content. I fell into my (hopefully last) depression and started gaming in April (due to a misalignment with my subconscious sense of self and my physical body), and snapped out 7 days ago. I have VERY limiting belief that real-life will always be emotionally painful, and the game world exists as an escape from the painful real world. This is in part because I had the Steve Pavlina prison experience --- except that I didn't actually commit the crime. (We have a frighteningly high number of things in common - I chalk that up to the fact that we fit into an evolving-human archetype that clashes with the "herd"). My brother gave me the perfect analogy for why people can't seem to snap out of their fear-based thinking about finances: When people get lost in the wilderness, it's not lack of food, water, or shelter that kills them. They are typically surrounded by abundance. What kills people is the fact that they give up hope of being rescued and find a good place to die. They fail to load up the appropriate perceptual software (i.e. seeing abundance) for the environment that they're in. The entrepreneurial world is a jungle. Domesticated pet-people, like myself, have no idea what to do when we're taken away from the safety of our pet-masters (the bosses, the teachers, the authority figures telling us what to do, and scolding us when we do it wrong). We fail to see basic opportunities right in front of our faces, because of our psychological focus (namely, "Just get a job.") In reality, our thinking translates to, "Sacrifice freedom for security." When I posed the original question, I had about 100g in my MMO. By the time I quit, I had over 600g playing the Auction House. Top-level-epic-uber items costs about 30g, and I only needed 7 of them. So I started buying things for people, and playing with others more. The moment I stopped playing the AH, I snapped out of my addicted state. It wasn't a large amount of gold I was really after, it was the challenge of making it (learning/growth), and the glory I could bask in with the new-found power from the items I bought. In other words, MMO's have been fulfilling a need that I'm not meeting in real-life, the need to make money FOR MYSELF in order to put myself on the path of growth. (i.e. $$$ allow me to play the game on my own terms, not the guild master/boss's terms). I'm using the analogy of making money in the AH to help me build the mental architecture necessary to launch my real-life money-making schemes. In the game, I was making about 1g per transaction at the start, but I KNEW I could do better. So I started speculating on certain crafting items, and ended up making 10-20g each resale. I just had to have the cajones to step it up a notch and take that ONE intelligent risk: my finances exploded. The most important lesson I've learned from the game is that once you've calibrated yourself to think adaptively about a new environment (such as the wilderness, the auction house, or in this case, the entrepreneurial world), all you see is opportunity rather than danger. If I had one piece of advice for people contemplating making this kind of transition, it would be to study Do It Now by Steve Pavlina until you can recite it from memory, and then to bring it back out on the first of every month to make sure you're still running the mental software. That article is like a wilderness survival handbook for the entrepreneurial world. Last edited by Manomanman; 06-29-2009 at 10:10 PM.