An interesting development for me around the theme of competition.
I’ve been playing the pokemon trading card game pocket on my phone lately, and as usual chasing the high of winning, and getting fearful if things are getting hairy and frustrated/‘down’ if I lose.
Eventually I got the hang of it and was winning more often than not, but because I was using the same deck/setup, it started to get a bit stale. So, I started to experiment with different deck setups. All along I knew that I had my original winning deck that I could go back to, but I was interested in seeing what other options there might be. Some of them worked, some of them didn’t as well, but there weren’t emotional stakes like there had been previously… ‘I’ wasn’t emotionally involved.
I realized that all I am really doing when I’m playing these games is finding out what works and what doesn’t, there’s no need for any emotional involvement / involvement from ‘me.’ If I do it ‘x’ way it doesn’t work as well as ‘y’ way, that’s just the facts of the situation. I found myself realizing that I was seeing a completely new frontier of how to experience these games and by extension many situations in life. All I’ve ever been doing is experimenting with this and that approach.
By doing all that I’ve developed a wonderful library of knowledge of what works and doesn’t, which I can carry forward and share with others. And I can continue every day - trying this, trying that.
There was something I was doing as an identity, ‘identifying’ with particular outcomes - “I am a winner / I am a loser,” not aware that both of those are completely dependent on conditions - all there is to do is tweak a condition here and there and the whole thing can flip. There is winning and there is losing but neither are permanent states - just as nothing in this universe is permanent. It’s wonderfully dynamic, and quite fascinating to take part in.