Level Up Your Life: How to Unlock Adventure and Happiness by Becoming the Hero of Your Own Story - Steve Kamb

partial excerpts (antilibrary)

Introduction: The Ordinary World

Monte Carlo Casino, Monaco. 2 a.m.: “Hit me.”

I ordered another cocktail (shaken, not stirred), adjusted the bow tie on my tuxedo, and cracked a corny joke to my new friends from Ireland sitting next to me

I awoke the next morning, enjoyed a breakfast watching billion-dollar yachts pulling into Monaco’s harbor, and proudly crossed a massive item off my gamified bucket list, appropriately named Steve’s “Epic Quest of Awesome”: Live like James Bond for a weekend.

They probably weren’t aware I had rented my tuxedo from an actual costume shop in the next town over, or that my hotel was paid for with hotel points and cost me nothing

return the next day to a cheap hostel

Escape from another day at school in which I wasn’t challenged, wasn’t captivated, and didn’t grow. Escape from another day at a job in which I wasn’t engaged, stuck in a position that didn’t line up with my strengths

Why bother spending time in the real world, where I had to deal with things that made me miserable, where I was unhealthy, unhappy, uninspired, and where there wasn’t any real excitement?

it’s fun to get lost in a book or a movie, or to jump into a video game world where you get to be the hero

I still love those games and movies and enjoy the entertainment they provide. They’re a part of who I am as a person. The problem was that they had become a way to avoid the unhappiness in my real life while also allowing me to continue doing nothing about it.

And one day, something changed. Instead of losing myself in games and using them to escape, I put the wheels in motion to start doing all the amazing things I used to dream of. I turned my life into a giant video game

The problem was that they had become a way to avoid the unhappiness in my real life while also allowing me to continue doing nothing about it

one day, something changed. Instead of losing myself in games and using them to escape, I put the wheels in motion to start doing all the amazing things I used to dream of. I turned my life into a giant video game, and lived out the fantasies of the characters I adored

In addition to my traveling adventures, I’ve found other ways to level up my life by implementing game mechanics into the rest of my life too. While writing this book, I also managed to pack on 15 pounds of muscle, learned to play the violin, dabbled with swing dance lessons, and volunteered every Thursday at a local children’s hospital. It’s been a rewarding, challenging, and fulfilling experience and I’m damn proud of it.

While writing this book, I also managed to pack on 15 pounds of muscle, learned to play the violin, dabbled with swing dance lessons, and volunteered every Thursday at a local children’s hospital.

How did I do it? By hacking my source code and rewriting the expectations that others had for me (and the expectations I had for myself). By implementing cheat codes and shortcuts wherever possible to achieve results faster. By putting steps in place to move me a little bit closer each and every day from the life I lived to the life I wanted to live. I essentially reverse engineered my life around my Epic Quest of Awesome, systematically eliminating the unimportant and unnecessary so that I could focus on living the game I’d dreamed up while still living a relatively normal life as a writer, nerd, and gamer.

I’ve taught thousands of people how to do it, and they’re currently on adventures as we speak. We call ourselves The Rebellion

Consider this book a strategy guide for your game of life, and the manual for membership in The Rebellion

Throughout this book, you’ll find Rebel Spotlights that highlight each person, along with their day job, alter ego, video-game profession, and how they have leveled up their lives

When we’re drifting mindlessly through our lives rather than actively participating in them, we often look to escape when real life becomes unfulfilling or too daunting.

It’s the equivalent of Bilbo Baggins, the hero in J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit, quietly living out an existence in his hobbit-hole, avoiding anything that could be dangerous, adventurous, or exciting

Whether it’s traveling more, losing weight, running a marathon, learning a new instrument, starting a website, or anything in between, The Rebellion would love to have you

Chapter 01: Leaving the Shire

it started in 2007 with a panic attack

panic attack on the airplane and decided some adventure was in order. I had just spent an amazing weekend back in Nashville with all of my college friends for a reunion, and, for the first time in over a year, I was truly happy.

A year prior I had purchased the domain NerdFitness.com, a half-baked idea I had to help nerds like myself not make all of the mistakes I had made in the gym trying to get healthy. I enjoyed exercising, but increasingly saw my fitness and my dreams of building a company get put on the back burner as more and more time was required of my wizard, Morphos Novastorm.

the fan in the computer I had built burned out

because I lacked the money to fix or replace the computer, I wouldn’t allow myself to play EverQuest again until I had actually done something with Nerd Fitness. I spent the next 18 months leading a double life

After those 18 months working on Nerd Fitness on nights and weekends, it became clear to me that my destiny and future lay with the website and community I was building. So I made the brutally difficult decision to walk away from a great job and devote myself full-time to helping people live healthier lives.

Then, one day it hit me. Instead of continuing to play Ever-Quest in my free time or dumping more time into games, books, and movies, I wanted to turn my life into a game. I still lived a double life, but things had changed. By day, I worked on NerdFitness.com, spending hours at my laptop writing articles and connecting with people. By night I could become adventurous Steve Kamb

My game would be called “The Epic Quest of Awesome.” With this game, I drew inspiration from all of my favorite movies, video games, and books

I developed a system that allowed me to gain experience points, accomplish quests, complete missions, and literally level up my life. I created a list of things that would challenge me physically (for example: completing a handstand push-up or learning a martial art), challenge me mentally (learning a new musical instrument or language), push me outside of my comfort zone (eating exotic foods like crocodile or visiting a foreign country where I didn’t speak the language), create financial independence (building my own business and paying off my student loans), and even helping others (volunteering my time and donating to charity).

Instead of leveling up in EverQuest, I could level up in real life. And then I did

I decided to go on a life-changing, globe-trotting quest of my own to see if this whole “Life is a Game” idea could truly be actualized. I sold almost everything I owned, packed the rest into a backpack, and set off on a trip around the globe

I’ve hacked my fitness to identify the most important exercises and nutrition decisions that would get me in the best shape of my life, despite not having access to a gym and having a chaotic travel schedule

I’ve hacked my brain, too. I actively seek out small failures to learn from so that I can succeed at big missions. I seek out challenges that scare the crap out of me

I realize that turning one’s life into a video game might sound silly to some. But video games, for the tens of millions of us who have grown up playing them, are a fundamental part of our lives and how we see the world

Better eating and exercise led to losing weight which has led to more confidence, which led me to participate in a Startup Weekend, which led to winning an award for my “Fight the Fire” game app prototype.

Nerd Fitness has given me tools to use to improve other areas of my life, as well. Role playing my character, “Shadow Lion,” has fueled my creativity in writing and led to friendships with other creative nerds

Chapter 02: The Cautionary Tale of the Underpants Gnomes

if you’re not careful, you could look back years from now and realize that all you’ve really done is collect a giant pile of underpants

Any time you read an inspiring news story, watch a YouTube video of somebody doing something amazing, or read a book like this one that encourages you to make changes in your life, you are collecting underpants

Phase 3 is what you hope to accomplish after starting to build your pile: your life when you are firing on all cylinders

Which brings me to the point of this chapter: when you join The Rebellion, you learn to dominate Phase 2

People who dominate Phase 2 are action-takers. They understand that collecting a few underpants and then immediately trying to do things with that knowledge is a much faster path to Phase 3 than just collecting more and more underpants!

Phase 2 is about learning, trying, failing, backtracking, trying again, and learning even more. Phase 2 is about going for your first hike despite not having the best gear. Phase 2 is about attempting your first push-up even if it’s ugly. Phase 2 is about trying to build your first mobile app instead of reading yet another book about programming

We’ll cover the fallacy of motivation later in the book, but for now I’ll tell you that the desire to change, live better, look better, feel better, and then have the guts to try things out and see what works (essentially, what you do with your pile of underpants) has to come from within you

Ask Jim Bathurst of BeastSkills.com how he became the amazing gymnastics guru he is today: he taught himself! He read some books and watched videos, he observed other people doing the things he wanted to do, and then he went out and tried to do them!

I’m going to let you in on a secret: spend 10 percent of your time and effort on Phase 1, and 90 percent on trying out the new things you are learning

Chapter 03: Ready Player One

Belief in these epic journeys gives us the hope we need to struggle and persevere through a dull existence to reach the good stuff. More than ever, we need these stories to endure the low points in our lives

As we get older, however, it becomes easier and easier to accept mediocrity.

We can hope for a better existence—we can want happiness and adventure in our lives—but in order for that to happen, we need to heed the call when it comes knocking.

Hope needs to be combined with action for the story to progress

Life is meant to be lived on your own terms

recruited others interested in the same stuff and built a Rebellion of hundreds of thousands of people along the way

Chapter 04: Rescue Your Alter Ego from Doubts and Disbeliefs

In The Hero with a Thousand Faces, famed mythologist Joseph Campbell introduces the ideas of the Hero’s Journey and the Monomyth

This idea was later improved by Christopher Vogler in his book, The Writer’s Journey: Mythic Structure for Writers

we need to determine that alter ego first.

take a few minutes now to write out where you are currently and where you plan on going

Visit https://LevelUpYourLife.com to create your own character, write out your origin story, and get ideas from other Rebels

try this activity: write as if you were looking back on your life at age 99. What did you accomplish in your adventures?

Here’s a Mad Lib you can fill in to help get you started:

Once you’ve determined what that alter-ego superhero life looks like, every action you take has the opportunity to move you one step closer to your future life as a hero—or further away.

Chapter 05: Resist Temptations and Convenient Excuses

systematically and thoroughly destroy any argument this voice in your head might have, so we can stop focusing on what’s impossible and shift the focus away from, “I can’t, because” and toward “Okay, this is my current situation, let’s fix it.”