A special shout out to Jon Acuff- thanks for suggesting a lesson from Galaga. Jon Acuff is a New York Times Best Selling Author of four books – check out his blog and find out more at: http://acuff.me/
A classic that has taken more of my quarters than I care to admit – Galaga embodies some of the very best things about gaming nostalgia – back in the day when arcades were where the serious gaming happened, this gem of a classic was king. It made Pacman seem down right absurd.
Whatcha playing? Oh, you are a yellow circle eating pills. Hmm. Nice.
Me? Yeah I’m busy destroying hundreds of alien bug drones in my sweet spaceship. I even blow them up in bonus levels, just for points, because I’m cool like that.
Even better was the cocktail table version where you and a friend would sit across from eachother and the screen would flip back and forth between players. I would set a slice of pizza on one side of the screen and an ice cold coke on the other side, and I was set.
Memories aside, there is an important lesson that we can walk away from this great game.
You Must Overcome Fear, to be Awesome
Like Joust and Tetris, the rules of the game are simple, but the implications are profound.
One feature that made Galaga really interesting was the alien ship that was equipped with a tractor beam – it would fly down and shoot a wide, slow moving ray that could capture your spaceship and recruit it for the other side.
At first this seems like a fate worse than death.
Until you realize that you can get your ship back…
AND double your firepower in the process!
I still remember the sense of wonder when I first saw this accomplished. I remember how awesome I felt when I would show off this move to someone else who had no idea what was going on.
Wait, you just let yourself get captured? On purpose?
Yup. Watch and learn.
It was a risky move, but it was awesome and it let you do awesome things. Sure, it could go wrong. Your former ship was now used against you. You could lose your ship by shooting it accidentally, or having it crash into you.
Avoiding this scenario was safe.
It was average.
And it is boring.
Life can follow this same path. We can default to playing it safe, not taking risks or chasing our dreams. Content to live out our existence, in a safe, boring manner, we allow fear to stop us from advancing to a state of awesomeness.
How Fear Holds Us Back
Fear is a nasty little thing, and in his Wall Street Journal best selling book Start: Punch Fear in the Face, Escape Average, Do Work that Matters, Jon Acuff points out that fear tries to defeat us whenever we try to do something awesome by attacking us with three basic messages:
1. Who are you to do that?
2. You’re too late
3. It has to be perfect
Jon asserts that fear and doubt are just like muscles:
Every time you believe a lie about yourself, it gets easier to believe the next time.
I have to admit, I experienced all of the three voices listed above when launching ClassicallyTrained.net. And while I have managed to overcome the first two messages with increasing success, I still struggle very often with wanting to make sure something is absolutely prefect before I go forward with it. There are so many ideas and lessons I will share here, but I need to get moving to overcome perfectionism.
Perfectionism leads to procrastination, and that keeps us trapped in fear.
Video games can actually be a safe way to try things out, without the extreme risks that we find in life. But let’s be clear – accomplishments in a video game are no substitute for real world results. This is an area that can be very dangerous and deceptive.
Overcoming Fear to be Awesome
Jon has two simple, yet excellent, action that you and I can take every time that fear gets loud. (By the way, when you are trying to do something of significance fear shows up big time – and its presence can sometimes be reassurance that what you are doing matters).
Write out the fear statement
Next time you take a step forward and you hear something like “who are you to do that” or “who is going to care about this anyways” write down what is in your mind – get it down on paper. It is amazing how silly or obviously wrong these statements sound once they are out of our head.
Share what you are hearing
I love the way that Jon talks about this step. Fear hates a sense of community – fear can do the most damage to us when we are alone and isolated. In fact, one of the statements that I have caught myself thinking sounds like this: “They will think you are silly for even being afraid to do that. Better keep it to yourself.”
Now it is important that you share with people that you can trust, or that are mature enough to admit their own fears and doubts as well, but don’t let that keep you from making the effort and reaching out – you will be surprised by how many other successful individuals feel the same way.
So take a risk, let the tractor beam pull up your spaceship, then in epic fashion, steal it back and be awesome.
