The part that I get stuck on is if you ask yourself the question, forty years from now, how much is this going to positively or negatively affect my life? The answer is very little.
That is going to have very little effect on who you are as a human being in 25, 30, 40 years from now.
Compared to if you spent that same seven hours of game playing this afternoon instead going and working out. Spending some time learning how to do yoga or meditation or something mindful to fill your mind and clear your mind and get yourself some really solid space, mentally and emotionally. Learning how to build a business online and grow a business. Or start a business. Or go work at something.
If you learn how to build something, create something or deliver something of value to society, how would that change your life 20 years from now?
You’d be a local community leader. You’d be someone people would look up to. All that significance and all those emotional things that that video game fulfills, you get that in real life for who you are naturally as a human being.
You wouldn’t have to try to seek out significance. You would be a person of significance in the community. Because of the difference you truly made in the lives of the people around you. If you just spent that same time doing something of value. Focusing on the majors of who you are and showing other people how to do the same.
Something that simple of a shift can make a massive difference. But the scary statistic is in a strong gamer culture nowadays, the average young person will spend 10,000 hours playing video games by the time they’re 21 years old.
Just to equate how much time that is, that’s the same amount of time a young person would spend from the 5th grade all the way through high school if they had perfect attendance for all those years.
Jack: That’s staggering.
Jairek: That’s how much time people are playing video games by the time they’re twenty-one. It’s scary. And if you’re spending that much time, 10,000 hours if you read the book, I think it was Outliers, is the amount of time it takes to become an absolute standout expert at something.
So we have people who are majoring in life and becoming experts at video games. They’re becoming experts at Grand Theft Auto and Metal Loner. Shooting people and blowing stuff up.
Why not become an expert on your own life? And create the type of life that will make you so fulfilled and so alive and so rich from within that no one can ever take that from you. No one can ever unplug it and knock you back three levels, because it’s your life that you’ve created from within that really, really truly is something that you will have forever, as long as you’re on this planet.
Jack: That’s an important point. Because so many people say I don’t have to, I’d love to go out and help do things. I’d love to really get behind my passion but I’m too busy with my work and video games. And to me, it all comes down to the difference between when people say, well, you know, Jack. I’ve done everything I can do to do this.
And what they are really saying is, you know, Jack, I’ve done everything I’m willing to do to do this.
And the fact is, when you look around, you see someone like you that, at this young age, at 23, five days to live from malaria. Some big decisions to make. Which the point that you brought up is when you’re faced with that, it kind of makes all your other troubles seem kind of trivial. And allows you to focus on what’s really important.
And there’s another same 23-year-old person that’s doing something so insignificant, but that it’s taking up so much of their time that is doesn’t allow them to go out and be that person that they can be.
And I think that is an example of one of the things, a really powerful statement that you had in your book was that every person you meet is either a warning or an example. And I think that’s important because a lot of people when you say that, they start looking outward. They say, oh, let me think of the people I hang out with. Which one of those are warnings and which ones are examples?
But I think one of the things that you say is, no, no, no. Which one are you?
Jairek: Yeah. And it’s something I urge people to do. And everyone knows the answer to that question in their instincts and their gut. Most people don’t want to listen to it.
When you ask the question, here’s the simplest and easiest way to ask the question. Based on your goals, based on who you want to be in the world, I think it was either Wayne Dyer or one of those people in the industry who said, listen. If you want to work backwards, what would you want people to say about you of who you were as a human being at your funeral?
Meaning, 50, 60, 70, 80 years from now you pass away. How do you want people to remember who you are as a person? A new updated way of saying that is the way a good friend of mine said, which is if you were to die, here’s how to know if your life was worth it. Did you really live? Did you really love? Did you really matter?
