As much as I enjoy gaming, I don’t gamify my life. Although I’ve always been working on my life, I realized my efforts were not really leading me to satisfaction. I encountered life coaching around 2018-2019 and since then I’ve been more intentional about “working” on my life.
I then became a life coach in 2022 I’ve been looking for the best way to work on my life. This lifelong quest for the best life really met an explosive catalyst called Buddhism and once I saw the light of the dharma the clarity I saw within me made it so obvious and clear how I need to live my life.
What I’m realizing these days is that not everybody thinks like me. This should have been lesson #1 from the get-go but here I am, actually understanding this at the ripe age of 38. What also finding is that people enjoy learning under structure and participating in quests and missions.
This should have been immediately obvious to me because I enjoy gaming precisely for that reason. So with that, let me give my first attempt at providing you a leveling roadmap to your life.
Level 0
You are a passive participant of your life, but you don’t have any problem with that. Ironically, this seems like a fairly good level to be in and I’d agree, it is a level that feels good to be in.
The problem is, at this state we don’t know what kind of a seed we are planting for our lives. We are following what feels good to us, what we think is good. But based on your life experience, did everything that felt good turn out to be good? Did everything you thought would be good turn out to be good?
Quest in Level 0: Evaluate your primary motivation for your actions. When you do something, what compels you to do it instead of not doing it? When you don’t do something, what compels you to not do it instead of doing it?
Level 1
You are a passive participant of your life, but you start noticing problems with your life. It is likely that in this level you find yourself in a catch-22 situation quite often. You know that you want something out of your life, but that means you’ll have to leave the comfort of your current life.
You will be dissatisfied with everything. When you’re still you’ll be antsy. When you’re active you’ll want comfort. When you’re working towards a goal you’ll be impatient. When you give up you’ll be disappointed in yourself.
The nice part about this level is, you’re less likely to do things that will cause future damage without being conscious of it. But you can’t do things that will cause future benefit because you can’t quite let go yet.
Quest in Level 1: Evaluate why your momentum changes. This means, when you go from a state of inaction to action, what causes that? When you go from a state of action to inaction, what causes that? Why not keep going, or why not stay? What invites the change in state?
Level 2
You are an active participant of your life, and you can get yourself to action. But your definition of good is a conditioned one, and you don’t have a clear idea on what you will do after you get to your desired result.
Yes, you work hard at your job and you exercise for your body. Yes, you put in the work and earnestly pay your dues… To be a good player in the game. But why play that game? Because you learned that this is the way.
In this state it’s so easy to get burnt out because on one level you can keep yourself going because you see that you’re making progress and improvements in all the right ways… But it’s not necessarily something YOU actually want in your life. It’s like pressing the gas pedal and brake at the same time; you put a lot of strain into yourself.
Quest in Level 2: Evaluate your future after your immediate goals. What will you do after the promotion? After the five figure month? After you win the gold medal? Do you have as much certainty about the after-future as the pre-future?
Level 3
You are an active participant of your life and you know what you want out of your life. Sometimes you go against the grain of society, but it doesn’t matter because you learned to value your own life. The only remaining problem: you are still living under your old way of living.
This old way of living is what we call karma. You try to change your ways by thinking, relying on inspiration and motivation… But nothing really sticks because karma doesn’t live in your head, it doesn’t live in your feeling. It lives in what CREATES thoughts and feelings.
At this point, you need to not only learn how to change your karma, you also need to experience the change in karma at least once. So there is your Quest in Level 3: answer this question. How does one change their entire habit of their life? How does one change their entire thought system they’ve lived their whole life with?
Of course, you can find a lot of the answers to this in my writings. But none of that means anything unless you live the answers yourself.
Level 4
Congratulations, you hit all the marks. You are an active participant of your life, you know what you want out of your life. You know how to change your life and realistically at this point you can solve all of your non-karmic problems through the application of dharma.
With this final level, you have two choices based on your karma. Because you experienced changing your karma, you know just how challenging it can be. This can lead you to:
- Continue participating in your karma, but accept the positive and negatives from it. You may occasionally feel the pull to change your karma, especially when it feels limiting. But because you know the actual work it entails to change it, you gladly choose to accept comfort over the change because true happiness without suffering has no conditions. You can be happy with your karma.
- Actively change your karma accepting how challenging it will be. Conversely from the above, you may occasionally feel the pull to just go back to how things were. But you know what your karmic life will be like; not only have you already lived it your entire life, but you know realistically it will result in you being like your parents or grandparents. You want to truly live YOUR life, and you gladly pay the cost of change.
Dare I say, level 4 is actually the starting point of your life. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying you need to speedrun through this process and get to level 4 as soon as possible. But what keeps on happening if you try to go at your own pace is, you will find yourself thinking that level 4 is not for you but instead for gifted people or people with exceptional dedication.
So why should we be at level 4? That is the Quest for Level 4: now that we have all the answers, what is the next step for us as we live our lives? We can be unconditionally happy, so it doesn’t really matter if we have a million dollars or 200 dollars. We can be happy as an unemployed volunteer or a senior VP in the corporate world. Traditional means of attached happiness means nothing to us. What is next?
This is a greatly simplified model of life and realistically you will spend an extended period of time during each level. What I unilaterally categorize as “karma” will include all of your trauma and personal history of hardships. My goal in these writings is to unlock a path to self-leveling, given that you have a passion for self-development. But I’ll tell you right now, I did get a lot of help from my coaches and dharma teachers to be at this self-sustaining level.
Explore the next level of life even if you’re not going to commit to anything today, because you simply don’t know what you don’t know, and all the possibility you have inside of you… You just don’t know it unless you explore it. Email me at billy@julylifecoach.com to get started
Billy Seol
July Life Coach
julylifecoach.com
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