分节阅读 Table of contents

• 1.You Are Stronger Than You Know

  • Do you know video games can treat severe physical pain better than drugs do? Medical researchers have tested Snow World, a 3-D virtual reality game in clinical trials, and found that, the game reduced pain by a whopping 30 to 50 percent for severe burn patients, and patients were able to control what they were thinking and feeling during an extraordinary 92 percent of the time.
    
    The psychological phenomenon behind it is called the spotlight theory of attention. According to this theory, human attention is like a spotlight. You can only focus on one source of information at a time, ignoring everything else. So for burn patients, they were actively blocking the brain from dedicating resources to processing the pain signals when they are playing Snow World.
    
    The take-away here is that, when you do find yourself in pain, you don't have to pay attention to signals from your nerves. You can choose to pay attention to anything you want, and control your spotlight for the better.
    
    And unlike other forms of entertainment such as music, books and cartoons, games can lead us to a flow state, a state of being completely cognitively absorbed in an activity. So by playing games, we can exert more control over anxiety and many other emotions, and can actively create better psychological and physical health.

• 2.You Are Surrounded by Potential Allies

  • You can turn almost anyone into an ally - even a stranger, even someone who thinks they don't like you - just by playing a game with them.
    
    Researchers at the University of Helsinki discovered that when two people play a video game called Hedgewars together, they experience high synchronizations of facial expression, heart rate, respiration and even neural activity.  These synchronizations increase their empathy and social bonding towards each other during and after the game. Actually, almost any game played in the same physical location creates this same kind of mind-and-body synchronization, laying the foundation for a more powerful and positive relationship between players.
    
    McGonigal then points out that not only games can trigger a "mind meld" connection. In our daily life, we often unconsciously mirror and imitate each other. We fall into lockstep when walking together; we return someone's smile naturally, without thinking; we shift our body language to match the posture of people we like. Why? Because by imitating other people, we can better understand their thoughts and feelings. In fact, people that synchronize more tend to score high on measures of empathy and social intelligence.
    
    Nevertheless, if synchronization happens in daily life, what makes the synching that takes place during game play so special? The reason is that the intensity of game-based linkage is typically much stronger. We tend to feel heightened emotions like excitement and joy during game play, and thus the quality of emotional linkage is heightened as well. In other words, the stronger our synchronized feelings, the deeper our mind-and-body connection.
    
    Online games, such as social network games, are also an especially powerful relationship management tool; they make it easier for us to maintain more active social relationships. Studies found that playing a social network game with someone makes people more likely to socialize with them in real life, and help each other with a real-life problem.
    
    So in all, gaming is the perfect way to practice your synchronization skills, increase your social intelligence, and develop more empathy for others. There are powerful abilities you can use in any social environment, inside and outside games.

• 3.You Are the Hero of Your Own Story

  • In video games, we play as heroes and evidence suggests that games actually develop our heroic potential.
    
    Re-Mission is a video game that was created for improving young cancer patients' adherence to difficult, but life-saving, chemotherapy and antibiotic regimens. In the 3-D video game, players control a superhero robot named Roxxi, who flies inside the human body, and uses weapons include chemotherapy blasters to blow up cancer cells. The game worked so well that patients who played Re-Mission for as little as two hours had greater medication adherence for three months than non-players. And it worked equally well for both frequent and infrequent game players.
    
    Why would playing such a short-term virtual game lead to these long-term behavioral changes? Because by playing games, players feel significantly more powerful, optimistic and capable to positively impact their own health than non-players. Psychologists call this state of mind self-efficacy, which means having confidence in the concrete skills and abilities required to solve specific problems or achieve particular goals. It converts motivation into consistent and effective action, and nothing primes the brain for general self-efficacy faster or more reliably than video games. Also, the good news is that once you have a feeling of self-efficacy about a particular problem, it tends to persist.
    
    In fact, all games are designed to build up players' self-efficacy. They lead players to accept a goal, make an effort, get feedback on the effort, improve a concrete skill, keep trying and eventually succeed. This is the classic path to increased self-efficacy.
    
    The author further points that dopamine can help to increase self-efficacy. Scientists had found that playing video games leads to a massive increase in the amount of dopamine, which is the “pleasure” neurotransmitter in the brain. The high level of dopamine in the reward circuitry ensures that gamers stay focused and motivated, and meanwhile, thanks to the faster learning that occurs with continuous dopamine release, gamers are more likely to improve their skills and eventually achieve their goals.
    
    Most importantly, the dopamine rush can translate from video games to real-life challenges and problem solving. That is to say, the self-efficacy we experience when we play games is a way of thinking that can be hardwired into the brain. And if you want to change your brain for the better, play more games. Or at the very least, provoke your brain with challenging learning opportunities in the same ways that good games do.

• 4.You Can Make the Leap from Games to Gameful

  • Being gameful means bringing the strengths and skills we develop during game play to real-life goals and challenges. However, not everyone who plays games will succeed in translating these strengths from games to daily life. McGonigal points out that it's not a matter of which games you play or how much time you spend playing them. Instead, it depends entirely on why you play games. In other words, your purpose to play games.
    
    There are two different kinds of immersions when we play a game: self-suppressive immersion and self-expansive immersion. Self-suppress happens when you're trying to prevent bad thoughts, feelings or experiences. Self-expand, on the other hand, happens when you're trying to promote your positive thoughts, feelings and experiences, and it helps us to build confidence and self-efficacy.
    In some cases, the line between self-expansion and self-suppression seems unclear, particularly when it comes to highly immersive video games. But ultimately, it boils down to how players think about what they're doing. If they feel powerful and proactive, then their game play is self-expansive. If they are simply seeking refuge, thinking the game is their only escape, then they are indeed self-suppressing. So the behavior may be the same, but the mindset can be different, and it's the mindset that determines whether gameful strengths will be used effectively not only in play, but in all of daily life.
    
    Therefore, McGonigal talks about what to do to move from a self-suppressive mindset to a self-expansive mindset. And it's quite easy. You simply need to identify the benefits you seek from games, and then consciously embrace play habits that give you what you seek. For example, digital games normally have three types of benefits - cognitive benefit, emotional benefit and social benefit. You can make a list of benefits you seek when you play, and connect them with a real-life purpose. And indeed, the more you play with purpose, the more resilience you'll have against all kinds of self-suppression in the future.
    
    McGonigal also found that people who play video games three or fewer hours per day tend to reap the benefits of play. They report having a good balance between their game pursuits and their real-world goals. However, for both children and adults, playing more than three hours a day takes too much time away from nongame life. These areas of life start to suffer, and the vicious cycle of self-suppressive play kicks in.
    
    McGonigal raises an important suggestion to people who have an avid game player in their lives. Don't admonish gamers to "put down the game and do something real", or to "stop wasting so much time". This kind of nudging, conditions gamers to believe that play has no purpose, no meaningful connection to success in daily life. It makes it almost impossible to develop a self-expansive mindset. What we should do is talk to them about their gameful strengths. We should share with them some positive research on games, and encourage them to see their love of games as a source of strength, not a weakness.

• 5.How to Be Gameful

  • McGonigal introduces 7 SuperBetter rules for us to draw on our natural gameful strengths in real life. Let's take a look for each of them!
    
    1) Challenge Yourself
    In the face of obstacles that others might view as a treat, the key is to adopt a challenge mindset.
    
    A challenge mindset works the same way as a gameful mindset. When we play games, we almost never feel hopeless, because games naturally make it easier for us to manage anxiety more effectively, to focus on opportunity rather than threats, and to fear failure less.
     
    2) Power-ups
    Power-ups are essential to most video games. They are bonus items that give you more strength, more power, or extra life.
    
    Power-ups in real life are those things we can do them easily, at no cost, and they never fail to make us feel at least a little better. For example, watching videos of baby animals, looking out a window for thirty seconds, and listening to a song you like are all power-ups in real life. Doing these things frequently can give us more positive emotions and thus make us stronger in face of stress.
    
    3) Bad Guys
    There are all kinds of bad guys in real life; they can be bad habits, unpleasant emotions or symptoms that cause you pain. While, bad guys in everyday life operate just the same way in games: they make things tougher on us, but also help us develop skills and strategies that ultimately make us stronger.
    
    There are five potential ways to successfully battle any bad guy, and they are Avoid, Resist, Adapt, Challenge, and Convert. You should experiment with all five strategies before deciding which one work best for which particular bad guy.
    
    4) Quests
    Every hero's journey is made up of countless quests, from the epic Greek hero Odysseus to Katniss Everdeen in The Hunger Games. Each and every obstacle made the hero just a little bit smarter, stronger and more prepared for the bigger challenges ahead. A quest is not just another to-do list item; it's a purposeful action you take in the context of search, searching for better health, relationships, job or just the next great adventure. Completing a quest means getting a step closer.
    
    5) Allies
    When you face a serious problem, you will often need social support around you. Rather than directly asking for help, it's far easier to get the support you need by inviting someone else to play a game and become your ally. An ally is someone who knows about your stress and challenges, and can check with you periodically to share and celebrate.
    
    In your first effort to recruit your ally, all it takes is for you to share your supperbetter game and for them to accept the invitation. You can start by sharing your challenge, asking them to help you battle the bad guys and find power-ups in your life. Once you have your ally onboard, there’s no limit in what they can help you with.
    
    6) Secret Identity
    Why adopt a secret identity? Believe it or not, simply by adopting a heroic nickname, you can bring out some of your most important challenge-facing strengths, like determination, courage, and compassion.
    
    McGonigal points that secret identity can help us practice self-distancing, a powerful technique of reflecting on you own problems as if they were happening to someone else. By using self-distancing, instead of getting caught up in our own intense feelings and the details of our experience, we look at the bigger picture.
    
    7) Epic Wins
    Epic wins are designed to be more like game goals than ordinary self-improvement goals. In real life, an epic win means conquering a big challenge in life; it can be lose 20 pounds, speak in public or complete a marathon.
    
    McGonigal points out that one of the key benefits of an epic win is that it can change what you think you're capable of, and give you the mind power when face more challenging situations in the future.
    
    So now you know the 7 rules of SuperBetter, don't forget to keep score and practice every day. You can track your SuperBetter progress in a daily score. For example, you can set a goal to activate at least three power-ups, battle at least one bad guy, and complete at least one quest. And you can keep record on your all-time best result at any given challenge to build momentum.
    
    McGonigal designed three adventures that can help  listeners practice all the gameful strengths. Each adventure is a set of power-ups, bad guys, and quests designed to help you to tackle a particular challenge. You can find them on the SuperBetter website and app.
    
    Hope you've learned why games make us stronger and how we can draw on our natural gameful strengths in real life. It is time to play SuperBetter!

关于本书 About the book

SuperBetter contains nearly 100 playful challenges anyone can undertake in order to build these gameful strengths. It includes stories and data from people who have used the SuperBetter method to get stronger in the face of illness, injury, and other major setbacks, as well as to achieve goals like losing weight, running a marathon, and finding a new job.

As inspiring as it is down to earth, and grounded in rigorous research, SuperBetter is a proven game plan for a better life. You’ll never say that something is “just a game” again.

本书金句 Key insights

● You are stronger than you know. You are surrounded by potential allies. You are the hero of your own story.

● Your ability to control your attention.

● Your power to turn anyone into a potential ally.

● Your natural capacity to motivate yourself and super-charge your heroic qualities，like willpower, compassion, and determination.