Living Life As A Sim Rather Than A First Person Shooter

Most of us live life as a first person shooter. We look at the world though our eyes, and the world, is what we see though our eyes (and what we imagine). Even when we imagine, we imagine things as seen through our eyes, first person shooter style.

The problem that I have found is that this perspective is the cause of a great amount of anxiety. Anxiety is really just a fancy word for fear. The fear is always a fear of loss. In this case, it is loss of control. For example, the fear that something bad at work will happen the next day, is really just a fear that things wont go the way we want them too. The fear is not in what will happen (unless you expect that you will get killed or injured at work) but that what will happen is not what we want to happen.

On reflection we may realize that this is a bit silly. We cannot know exactly what will happen on a given day with certainty. We are setting ourselves up for fear (and possibly anger). It is the perspective we have on the world that causes this.

Life As A Sim

It is hard to try to stop thinking a certain way because we tend to slip back into old habits. I have found that proactively picturing myself as a Sim (like in the game The Sims) gives me a better perspective. I view myself in my mind from the 3rd person perspective looking down on myself. I can now see that the world is around me and I am not the world. If this Sim person is in a rain storm, oh well that happens, perhaps I should try to get the Sim an umbrella.

Most importantly, when I imagine that Sims day, the Sim is simply another person in the world. What ever happens, happens to the world and the Sim is just living in it. Yes the sim has moves to make (perhaps I can get the Sim out of bed early and get to work on time), but the Sim does not control the world. Furthermore the Sim is not responsible for the world.

The Sim only needs to try to be a good Sim, especially good to the other Sims.

There is nothing to lose because there are no expectations of control of the world. When the expectations of control go away, the fear of loss of that control goes away with it, and so goes away the anxiety.