A decade ago, if you had asked me to describe a gamer, I would have been at a loss. I didn’t know any gamers. I remembered some guys in high school who played D & D but I had no idea what that meant. I would have told you it seemed like a guy thing. It was an alien universe to me.
Then I met my husband. He told me he wanted to buy a game he used to play with some friends in California. “Okay,” I said. That’s how I ended up becoming a night elf balance druid in World of Warcraft. That’s how I became a gamer.
Without this experience, Jane McGonigal’s SuperBetter website and book would have been wasted on me. Having played WoW for ten years, I understand the basic principles of SuperBetter:
- You form a secret identity
- You power up
- You tackle quests of increasing difficulty
- You battle bad guys
- You find allies to assist you
SuperBetter is about being gameful when facing challenges. It is about building up emotional, physical, social, and mental resilience to get through tough times. These are the concepts I’ll be exploring the rest of this year on Fitness Fridays.
Stay tuned for next week when I reveal my (not-so) secret identity!
