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For the first time in 10+ years, I revisited my TEDx talk from 2012:
“Nerd Fitness and resetting the game of life.”
My first thought: “Whoa, Steve. Those are some EPIC flaps.”
My next thought: “Bold choice with a striped shirt, jeans and flip flops!”
Then I gave myself some grace.
I am deeply uncomfortable with the spotlight. I hate public speaking. Makes me want to throw up every time. I also don’t like being on camera.
And yet, I have ideas that I think can help people.
That’s why I write and share my ideas. And sometimes I force myself to go on stage. For this interview, I had to take two buses through the jungles of Ecuador (where I was living at the time) and then two flights to get to Atlanta.
I stayed at my friend Kappy’s house, and the night before the interview I decided to stay up and rewrite the whole damn thing. That morning I rehearsed my speech with his two dogs, then rushed to Emory and just YOLO’d and shouted my speech into space.
12 years later, watching this speech again, I have some thoughts.
If you want to take a trip down memory lane, you can watch the conversation on YouTubewhich surprisingly has over 100,000 views.
My biggest surprise is watching again…
It wasn’t as embarrassing as I thought!
Baby Steve actually had some decent ideas and was a good storyteller! Especially when you consider that I rewrote the entire speech 12 hours ago and got zero hours of sleep. Oh, to be young and naive again.
This is the slide that pissed me off the most, and I think it’s the one I want to spend the most time on:
For most of my early 20s, I spent an unhealthy amount of time playing video games. At the time, I convinced myself that video games were the problem. They became too addictive, too comfortable, and were the reason I didn’t make much progress in my real life.
The reality is one level deeper. It wasn’t just video games. It was that I didn’t have much of a life to look forward to. I didn’t like my job (selling construction equipment), I didn’t have goals or things in my personal life to look forward to. So I escaped into video games.
Older and wiser and with shorter sideburns, I have a better understanding of human behavior and my own personal struggles with procrastination and escape.
As stated in my friend Nir Eyal’s book Unhindered, if we don’t address the root cause of the distraction or escape, our brains will become very good at finding one more thing to get hooked on!
In other words, if you can go one level deeper into WHY you are delaying or avoiding reality (probably with the help of therapy) can help you get out of a rut.
For once I found something to look forward to (for me it was turning life into an adventure video game like Zelda and EverQuest), suddenly video games became a far less appealing use of my limited free time.
I still play video games regularly these days (just finished Fallout 4), but now I know more.
When video games take over too much of my life, it does probably because I avoid facing the reality of life’s problem.
Maybe I’m afraid to go back to work on my secret book project because I worry it’s not good enough. Or maybe I’m avoiding an awkward conversation or solving a real problem in my life.
So the solution is not to turn off the Playstation. That’s solving a problem I’m actually working hard to avoid.
It’s better to know why I’m procrastinating instead of just blaming video games.
How is my epic quest going?
In my talk I talk about my Bucket List, which I renamed Epic Quest of Awesome. For a good 8 years, this was my big focus.
Literally earning experience points for completing real-life tasks.
I did this after practice around the world and live 14 months of adventure travel.
I even published a book about turning life into a game, Level up your life, back in 2016. I recently reacquired the rights to this book and hope to release version 2 in the next year.
(That’s why you can’t buy it now, sorry about that!).
12 years later, life is a little different.
If you’ve been reading this newsletter for the past year, you may have noticed a theme: acceptance and self-compassion.
I changed my perspective on goals.
I’ve been running ragged for over a decade, building Nerd Fitness, giving as much as possible, chasing the next goal. Each goal led to the next. Each dragon killed asked me to find another dragon.
It became an endless loop of eternal “more more more”.
And eventually I realized that I had drifted quite far from what actually made me happy.
Over the past few years, I’ve decided to live a little differently.
Instead of big long-term goals with dramatically organized plans, I narrowed my focus to, “How can I have a good day today?”
I live like I do I will NEVER “get there.”
I still have goals and I still have things I hope to achieve in life.
I’m just playing a different game than I was at 28. I think that “life is a game” philosophy served me well at the time, and I think now I’ve added a few extra doses of reality to how this is going.
For someone stuck in a rut and escaping into virtual worlds too much, I think thinking of life as a video game can be a pretty fun way to get out of that rut.
It might not work for everyone, but I think having things to look forward to and goals to work towards, and then finding ways to make little bits of progress can help.
I cover this in an article called “The Nerd’s Guide to Success and Happiness” which still stands!
A little nuance and perspective can go a long way in playing life!
Entering the comments section…
I made a dangerous choice to enter the cesspool of the internet:
Comment section on my video.
I was shocked to see that 95% of the comments were super positive!
It was one comment, however, it gave me a unique opportunity to do something I’ve always wanted to do.
Prove someone wrong on the internet.
I mentioned in my speech that I hope to lift 400+ pounds one day. I grew up skinny and weak, and later found out I had spondylolisthesis, which means two of my vertebrae don’t line up.
For the past 15 years, the deadlift has been my favorite exercise. It is the movement that makes me feel the most powerful and empowered.
I went and found a my 2018 videowhere after 6+ years of dedicated, slow growth and focus on getting stronger, I deadlifted 420 lbs with a body weight of 172 lbs. No straps, no straps and no double grip!
And yes. 12 years later, I had to answer and tell the guy I did.
I won’t lie, it felt good to prove a random internet commenter wrong! Hahahaha
Petty and unnecessary? Yep!
Satisfying? Very much so.
Two buttons: Power and Reset
I ended my speech with something that was much more powerful than I expected.
The original Nintendo Entertainment System has two buttons: POWER and RESET.
In the game of life, we have to press the power button once. It is lit when we are born and extinguished when we die.
But we also have the opportunity to press the RESET button. If you have a thought or identity that no longer serves you, or some aspect of life that just isn’t working… it’s okay to hit the reset button.
It’s okay to try again, even if you failed last time.
remember, our knowledge is transmittedand we never start at the beginning.
Game on, my fellow geek!
-Steve
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