Tired of your kids lost in a game? Want them to read a book or play soccer instead?
Read on. Bear with me for a few paragraphs and you may get a slightly new perspective.
I have kids. They are gamers.
As a mental trainer, there is one skill that my subjects benefits the most from: Learning to be fully mentally present. Whether it is a random person off the street or an executive, a stage artist or an olympic athlete - the skill of truly being here and now is fundamental to everything else we do. It is the basic ability on which training, productivity, performance and focus is built.
This is well covered in the OnePageBook, “Mental training - The core”.
While most people can get through a work day being less than 10% mentally there, some professions require a much higher degree of mental presence.
The biathlete Tiril Eckhoff must have an immense presence and focus to be able to shoot down her targets.
The ballerina Maiko Nishimo must have a pure and clean presence as she delivers a world class performance.
These are just two examples of people I help to maintain a stable mental presence. They both have to train hard to master the skill of being here and now.
Some kids train this skill without even knowing it. Some kids do this training every day. The gamers. They get to keep the natural ability that we are all born with.
Many gamers are exercizing this ability to be here and now more than 5 hours every day. The professional e-sport contenders put in more hours than any other professional sports.
If you’re not there fully focused and in the game you’re getting taken out. You get fragged, you run the car off the road, you miss that one opportunity, you lose. No other endeavor I know requires such an intense mental presence and focus over such long stretches of time.
It boggles the mind how some are able to extend the boundaries of what we thought was humanly possible. They train on being in the zone.
With more than 100 million active League of Legends players, 250 million Fortnite players and hundreds of millions playing other games, there is an enormous amount of kids who exercise focus and mental presence every day.
Read a book instead? Comfy in a sofa, half there - half somewhere else… Or on a the pitch playing ball? Mentally in and out of the game…
Yes, balance matters. Yes, physical exersize is important. Social interactions, picking up girls and learning math are all valuable skills.
But the kids are not merely “wasting their time paying games”. They get to exercize some abilities better than any other activity can give them. It can even help them focus in school.
So parents; embrace your kid’s gaming. Or better, get in on the action and see how your focus and mental presence compares.
And then some inspiration to end off this blog post:
Link to this post: https://isene.org/2019/11/esport.html