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SuperBetter: How a gameful life can make you stronger, happier, braver and more resilient
Jane McGonigal
A revolutionary new self-help book by top flight game designer Jane McGonigal.
After suffering a brain injury, Jane McGonigal came up with a game to help aid her recovery and battle the ensuing depression she experienced. Half a million people have now played this game to astonishing results: depression gone in 6 weeks in some cases and even terminal cancer patients reporting that playing the game gives them a sense of control over their own health. The book shows readers how to use these techniques to find strength and create positivity: readers can look to their own power-ups’ which are little things they can do to feel better and tackle the hurdles in their own lives.
This book provides simple step-by-step ideas that can be carried out in day-to-day life, helping you transform your life with a new flexible and reenergised mindset. In this book McGonigal uses her own story and those of others to expertly demonstrate how simple changes can result in dramatic life-affirming effects. And what’s more, she tells you how you yourself can lead a more gameful life.
Copyright (#ubf7fca3c-7337-5999-a06f-5aaa43a4b5b0)
Thorsons
An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF www.harpercollins.co.uk (http://www.harpercollins.co.uk) First published in the US by Penguin Press 2015 This edition published by Thorsons 2015 FIRST EDITION © Jane McGonigal 2015 Cover layout design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2015 A catalogue record of this book is available from the British Library Jane McGonigal asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books. Find out about HarperCollins and the environment at www.harpercollins.co.uk/green (http://www.harpercollins.co.uk/green) Source ISBN 9780008106331 Ebook Edition © September 2015 ISBN: 9780008106355 Version: 2015-11-13
“Don’t we all want to be better than before? If fact, we’d like to be superbetter! Jane McGonigal’s fascinating, ground-breaking approach shows how ‘living gamefully’ can help us lead happier, healthier, more engaged lives.’
GRETCHEN RUBIN, bestselling author of Better Than Before and The Happiness Project
“Hundreds of thousands of people have had their lives changed by Jane McGonigal’s SuperBetter program, and I see why. It’s a marriage of positive psychology with pioneering insights from cutting-edge game design. This is a plan for profound growth in the face of whatever challenges life throws at you – and whatever ones you can throw at yourself.”
CHARLES DUHIGG, bestselling author of The Power of Habit
“Many of us struggle to overcome challenges that seem overwhelming. Jane McGonigal has taken her immense knowledge of the science of gaming to create an innovative guide that allowed her to overcome her greatest challenge and now, thankfully, is available to each of us to overcome our own.”
JAMES R. DOTY, M.D., Professor of Neurosurgery, Stanford University School of Medicine
“Jane McGonigal’s book is an inspiring one about overcoming personal obstacles, and a revolutionary testament that game playing is for ANYONE who wants to change their life for the better. To become stronger, braver, and happier, you have to ‘play with a purpose.’ And if you don’t know what that means, get ready ... you will.”
STACY LONDON, host of What Not to Wear and author of The Truth About Style
“Until you understand yourselves as the hero of your own story, you’ll never make a dent in the world. This insightful book shows you how to create the life of your dreams, using a gameful approach.”
NILOFER MERCHANT, CEO, Silicon Valley strategist and author of The New How
“Masterfully written and well researched, SuperBetter is literally a game-changer for anybody looking to build resilience in their lives. Though today’s rapidly evolving world can often seem overwhelming, McGonigal offers an important and timely roadmap to take back control of our own lives and focus on what really matters.”
MARC GOODMAN, author of Future Crimes and Chair for Policy, Law and Ethics at Singularity University
“After reading Jane McGonigal’s SuperBetter I’ll never again say that something is ‘only a game.’ SuperBetter gives readers the tools to take the same challenge mindset we bring to playing the games we love and apply it to facing our greatest life challenges. The result is a clear path, not just to post-traumatic recovery, but to post-traumatic growth. In every sense a game-changing book.”
SUSAN CAIN, co-founder of Quiet Revolution LLC; New York Times bestselling author of Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking
Dedication (#ubf7fca3c-7337-5999-a06f-5aaa43a4b5b0)
To Tilden and Sibley— May you grow up to be the heroes of your own stories
Contents
Cover (#u3638a5e2-4c98-5109-9568-ff584a2f0096)
Title Page (#u44f71d61-dec8-51aa-8559-b1b646e9dffe)
Copyright (#u792b06dd-e43d-5019-86dc-88de69caa68a)
Dedication
Before You Play, Here’s What You Need to Know (#u253db2f1-7ca3-5424-9a90-85346e3f1465)
Introduction (#u09fa0645-31ca-58be-9d87-9215971a7a91)
PART 1 (#u3a0065a4-c698-5518-b1ff-93a2cffee2e2)
Why Games Make Us Superbetter (#u3a0065a4-c698-5518-b1ff-93a2cffee2e2)
1. YOU ARE STRONGER THAN YOU KNOW (#ucdf34dc2-7ca0-57fb-b421-bc557ee44150)
2. YOU ARE SURROUNDED BY POTENTIAL ALLIES (#u6199ca1f-8f25-53ce-8db3-c16f43d6729a)
3. YOU ARE THE HERO OF YOUR OWN STORY (#uc0dcb844-77f8-54ab-965e-694c29508619)
4. YOU CAN MAKE THE LEAP FROM GAMES TO GAMEFUL (#u37564ba0-967c-5df5-8ced-38962a10030f)
PART 2 (#ubdabf1aa-3749-518f-b8c4-60a97174fc4c)
How to Be Gameful (#ubdabf1aa-3749-518f-b8c4-60a97174fc4c)
5. CHALLENGE YOURSELF (#u885cfa04-a246-59e4-a3e5-086aeeb5858b)
6. POWER-UPS (#uece23688-939b-5f72-9452-95bd782715c0)
7. BAD GUYS (#u5a7f3df9-94dd-5ab4-b59f-0b40eaeb177c)
8. QUESTS (#u97b036a4-1c52-52dd-ac01-052a22fa5760)
9. ALLIES (#u212b31fa-63a1-5183-b78b-d953e4b839f9)
10. SECRET IDENTITY (#ufb739b68-afce-55dc-b6d5-22a5377faa57)
11. EPIC WINS (#uc2dea9d1-ed82-53c1-9b07-461df0adbc26)
12. KEEPING SCORE (#u0454280a-ad5e-53c5-9983-fc1a595bc53e)
PART 3 (#ue0c18231-fdcb-5966-bf1c-6d74cb55f8f1)
Adventures (#ue0c18231-fdcb-5966-bf1c-6d74cb55f8f1)
ADVENTURE 1. LOVE CONNECTION (#u33e905c1-1011-5a7c-94e1-7d08a3200f24)
ADVENTURE 2. NINJA BODY TRANSFORMATION (#ucde599e8-f781-5581-a083-f7711c479ab0)
ADVENTURE 3. TIME RICH (#uc11a5b07-fcb2-5d64-a861-332f182f4349)
About the Science (#u19590f72-a221-5315-9014-437165a8d7b4)
Notes (#u84356edf-7f5b-59d8-960d-846d0b407747)
List of Searchable Terms (#u3471579b-fac2-576b-878f-073aff88c4f7)
Acknowledgments (#ud1cae1d1-b583-5fa8-b74c-0c57995aeddb)
Also by Jane McGonigal (#ua6a1006d-1ca4-5c28-9efe-41d640608457)
About the Publisher (#u57b761d9-8c64-5220-bfda-b5e077cc4d43)
Before You Play, Here’s What You Need to Know (#ubf7fca3c-7337-5999-a06f-5aaa43a4b5b0)
The SuperBetter method is designed to make you stronger, happier, braver, and more resilient.
It’s based on the science of games—and there’s a lot of evidence that it works.
A randomized, controlled study conducted by the University of Pennsylvania found that playing SuperBetter for thirty days significantly reduces symptoms of depression and anxiety and increases optimism, social support, and players’ belief in their own ability to succeed and achieve their goals. The study also found that people who followed the SuperBetter rules for one month were significantly happier and more satisfied with their lives.
A clinical trial funded by the National Institutes of Health and conducted at Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center and Cincinnati Children’s Hospital found that the SuperBetter method improves mood, decreases anxiety and suffering, and strengthens family relationships during rehabilitation and recovery.
Meanwhile, data collected from more than 400,000 SuperBetter players has helped me improve the method, to make it easier to learn and more fun to use in everyday life.
Every single day for the past five years I’ve heard from someone who says that the SuperBetter method has changed their life. It is my greatest hope that SuperBetter will help you tackle your toughest challenges, and pursue your biggest dreams, with more courage, creativity, optimism, and support.
Please remember, the SuperBetter method is not a substitute for medical advice or treatment. Many successful SuperBetter players—including a majority of participants in the University of Pennsylvania study and all the participants in the clinical trial—followed the SuperBetter method alongside some form of continuing counseling, medication, or rehabilitation, or with a doctor’s supervision. The SuperBetter method is NOT an alternative to therapy, counseling, ongoing medical treatment, or medication—nor is any game recommended or discussed in this book.
Now that you know—let’s play!
Introduction (#ubf7fca3c-7337-5999-a06f-5aaa43a4b5b0)
You are stronger than you know.
You are surrounded by potential allies.
You are the hero of your own story.
These three qualities are all it takes to become happier, braver, and more resilient in the face of any challenge.
Here’s the good news: You already have these qualities within you. You don’t have to change a thing. You are already more powerful than you realize.
You have the ability to control your attention—and therefore your thoughts and feelings.
You have the strength to find support in the most unexpected places, and deepen your existing relationships.
You have a natural capacity to motivate yourself and supercharge your heroic qualities, like willpower, compassion, and determination.
This book will help you understand the powers you already have—and show you that accessing these powers is as easy as playing a game.
And yet this book is not about playing games—at least, not exactly. It’s about learning how to be gameful in the face of extreme stress and personal challenge.
Being gameful means bringing the psychological strengths you naturally display when you play games—such as optimism, creativity, courage, and determination—to your real life. It means having the curiosity and openness to play with different strategies to discover what works best. It means building up the resilience to tackle tougher and tougher challenges with greater and greater success.
The best way I know to explain what it means to be gameful—and how being gameful can make you stronger, happier, and braver—is to tell you a story. It’s the story of how I invented the SuperBetter method—and the life-threatening challenge I had to overcome to be able to write this book.
In the summer of 2009, I hit my head and got a concussion. It didn’t heal properly, and after thirty days I still had constant headaches, nausea, and vertigo. I couldn’t read or write for more than a few minutes at a time. I had trouble remembering things. Most days I felt too sick to get out of bed. I was in a total mental fog. These symptoms left me more anxious and depressed than I had ever been in my life.
I had trouble communicating clearly to friends and family exactly what I was going through. I thought if I could write something down, it would help. I struggled and struggled to put together words that made sense, and this is what I came up with:
Everything is hard.
The iron fist is pushing against my thoughts.
My whole brain feels vacuum pressurized.
If I can’t think who am I?
Unfortunately, there is no real treatment for postconcussion syndrome. You just rest as much as you can and hope for the best. I was told I might not feel better for months or even a year or longer.
There was one thing I could do to try to heal faster. My doctor told me I should avoid everything that triggered my symptoms. That meant no reading, no writing, no running, no video games, no work, no email, no alcohol, and no caffeine. I joked to my doctor at the time: “In other words, no reason to live.”
There was quite a bit of truth in that joke. I didn’t know it then, but suicidal ideation is very common with traumatic brain injuries—even mild ones like mine.
It happens to one in three, and it happened to me. My brain started telling me: Jane, you want to die. It said, You’re never going to get better. The pain will never end. You’ll be a burden to your husband.
These voices became so persistent and so persuasive that I started to legitimately fear for my life.
And then something happened. I had one crystal-clear thought that changed everything. Thirty-four days after I hit my head—and I will never forget this moment—I said to myself, I am either going to kill myself, or I’m going to turn this into a game.
Why a game? By the time I hit my head in 2009, I’d been researching the psychology of games for nearly a decade. In fact, I was the first person in the world to earn a Ph.D. studying the psychological strengths of gamers and how those strengths can translate to real-world problem solving. I knew from my years of research at the University of California at Berkeley that when we play a game, we tackle tough challenges with more creativity, more determination, and more optimism. We’re also more likely to reach out to others for help. And I wanted to bring these gameful traits to my real-life challenge.
So I created a simple recovery game called “Jane the Concussion Slayer.” This became my new secret identity, a way to start feeling heroic and determined instead of hopeless.
The first thing I did as the concussion slayer was to call my twin sister, Kelly, and tell her, “I’m playing a game to heal my brain, and I want you to play with me.” This was an easy way to ask for help. She became my first ally in the game. My husband, Kiyash, joined next.
Together we identified and battled the bad guys. These were anything that could trigger my symptoms and therefore slow down the healing process—things like bright lights and crowded spaces.
We also collected and activated power-ups. These were anything I could do on even my worst day to feel just a little bit good or happy or powerful. Some of my favorite power-ups were cuddling my Shetland sheepdog for five minutes, eating walnuts (good for my brain), and walking around the block twice with my husband.
The game was that simple: adopt a secret identity, recruit allies, battle the bad guys, and activate power-ups. But even with a game so simple, within just a couple days of starting to play, that fog of depression and anxiety went away. It just vanished. It felt like a miracle to me. It wasn’t a miracle cure for the headaches or the cognitive symptoms—they lasted more than a year, and it was the hardest year of my life by far. But even when I still had the symptoms, even while I was still in pain, I stopped suffering. I felt more in control of my own destiny. My friends and family knew exactly how to help and support me. And I started to see myself as a much stronger person.
What happened next with the game surprised me. After a few months, I put up a blog post and a short video online explaining how to play. Not everybody has a concussion, and not everyone wants to be “the slayer,” so I renamed the game SuperBetter.
Why SuperBetter? Everyone had told me to “get better soon” while I was recovering from the concussion, but I didn’t want just to get better, as in back to normal. I wanted to get superbetter: happier and healthier than I’d been before the injury.
Soon I started hearing from people all over the world who were adopting their own secret identities, recruiting their own allies, and fighting their own bad guys. They were getting “superbetter” at facing challenges like depression and anxiety, surgery and chronic pain, migraines and Crohn’s disease, healing a broken heart and finding a job after years of unemployment. People were even playing it for extremely serious, even terminal diagnoses, like stage-five cancer and Lou Gehrig’s disease (ALS). And I could tell from their messages and their videos that the game was helping them in the same ways that it helped me.
