If you’ve been playing games over the past few years, it’s likely you’re aware of the trend of Battle Royale games that has risen since games like PUBG and Fortnite gained popularity on Twitch, YouTube, and Mixer. Whether or not you like this style of game – admittedly not my forte – battle royale seems to be a game mode that is here to stay, at least presently.
It was just the other day that I watched a great YouTube video from Better Ideas about comfort zones that the tie-in between Battle Royale and our personal comfort zones struck me. The video discusses how our comfort zone will fight to keep us inside it, with or without any logical reason. When we fail to challenge ourselves and push our boundaries by experiencing things outside of our comfort zones, that circle will shrink, putting things that were once just outside of the realm of comfort much further outside the realm of comfort.
Imagine if you were playing a game like Fortnite and the storm was closing in on you. Now in games like this, the storm shrinks over time, not based on any action of the players. However, with your comfort zone, the more you play around outside of the ring of the storm, the more you can expand the zone of comfort for yourself. Personally, I’ve been doing a lot of personal exploration lately, trying new things, reading about new ideas, and working on learning all that I can about myself and the world around me. A lot of what was once outside of my own comfort zone is now well within it and it feels very much like playing a battle royale against my own brain.
When it comes down to it, the storm of your own comfort zone is doing everything it can to close in on you, to keep you trapped and stationary, not trying anything new. It’s up to us to push back. If video games like Halo have taught me anything, it’s that when you encounter resistance, you’re going the right way. Trying new things can be hard, even terrifying, but as the quote often attributed to Thomas Jefferson goes: “If you want something you have never had, you must be willing to do something you’ve never done.”
Stay safe out there, Dudes! Happy gaming!