Reframing the fear of failure through the game “Dead Cells”

"Dead Cells" is a rogue-like game where players control a character that must fight through a series of levels, collecting weapons and equipment along the way. Each time the character dies, the player must start over from the beginning, but with the knowledge and experience gained from the previous runs.

Eventually you get into the gameplay loop of "Play, die, learn, repeat"

However.

What if we turned that into "Try, fail, learn, repeat" and applied it to our lives?

I know it's not life changing or ground breaking by any stretch.

But somewhere during one of my playthroughs it hit me, this game is such a great analogy for the process of building something new.

You start out with zero concept of the rules, where it is you're going or what you're supposed to be doing.

Yet you do it anyway. Inching your way towards a greater understanding of how things work, and actually getting better.

Why?

Because you know the only consequence is staying where you're at. At zero, you don't have anything to lose.

You just don't pick up the game.

Now let's take the "game" out of it.

Just don't pick up the book, don't take that class, don't worry about getting off the bench. Hell, don't even TRY.

When you put it that way, you realize you have more to lose when you don't even give yourself a chance to try.

You give up your potential for growth, and you cement your own failure.

After coming to this realization I remembered I had a project of building a personal website. I wanted to start on it, but never did due to my fear of failure and "perfectionism".

I came to the conclusion that this was my sign to get started on building that page.

So after more than a year of having owned this domain and created this page, i'm going to hit publish on my first post.

I hope to share what I find with anyone reading this as I "Try, Fail, Learn, and Repeat".

Thanks for reading