I hear from parents like Michelle T., a mom in West Virginia, who says:
My thirteen-year-old son has juvenile diabetes, and this is EXACTLY what I’ve been praying for. Our family has formed our own superhero team, and the emotional change I see in my son is glorious! I’m getting my son back! Thank you!
And I hear from patients like Jessica MacDonald, then a thirty-year-old administrative assistant from Denver who played SuperBetter while she battled multiple surgeries and hospitalization for a severe staph infection.
When you’re ill or injured, the world becomes one of can’ts. I can’t lift that because of the antibiotics IV in my arm; I can’t attend that event because I’m too tired; I can’t go to work because I’m on enough medications to kill a horse and barely know my own name. A million times a day the word can’t goes through your mind, and it murders your soul by inches. If I boil all the benefits of this game down to one thing, it is this: SuperBetter turns can’t into can. Sure, there are still things you aren’t allowed to or shouldn’t do, but you stop focusing so much on the limitations. You begin to see and celebrate your achievements.
Jessica invited her doctors and nurses to be allies, and they had a lot to say about the game, too.
The question everyone asks is “Did it help speed your recovery?” I can’t say unequivocally that I got better faster because of this game, but I will tell you what my infectious disease doctor told me. In nearly fifty years of medical practice, he said he’s come to one conclusion: patients’ attitudes overwhelmingly influence the recovery process. He told me, “I don’t know if you got better faster, but you got better better.”
It doesn’t matter if you’re a lifelong game player or you’ve never played a video game. It doesn’t matter if you prefer sports, card games, or board games to digital games. Whatever your history with games, you have the capacity to tap into your natural strengths by playing games—and you can learn to bring these gameful strengths to your real life challenges and goals.
Most people see games as nothing more than a pleasant distraction—or worse, as an addicting waste of time. But I see them differently—and not just because of my personal experience with SuperBetter. I’ve been researching the psychology of games for nearly fifteen years. I’ve studied games that decrease anxiety, alleviate depression, prevent pain, and treat post-traumatic stress disorder. I’ve analyzed games that increase willpower, boost self-esteem, improve attention skills, and strengthen family relationships. The mounting scientific evidence about games from the fields of psychology, medicine, and neuroscience has changed my mind about what games are—and what they can teach us. Games are not just a source of entertainment. They are a model for how to become the best version of ourselves.
I want you to look at games differently, too. I want you to discover the connection between the strengths you naturally express when you play games and the strengths you need to be happy, healthy, and successful in real life. To be more specific, I want you to see games as an opportunity to practice the seven life-changing skills that will make you a stronger person in every way: mentally, emotionally, physically, and socially.
You don’t have to be an avid game player to activate your gameful strengths in everyday life, but if you love or play any game regularly—golf, bridge, Scrabble, soccer, poker, Candy Crush Saga, solitaire, sudoku—you’re probably a bit more in touch with your gameful strengths already.
To lead a more gameful life, you simply have to be open to learning about the psychology of games—and be willing to experiment with new ways of thinking and acting that can help you increase your natural resilience.
The fastest way I know to get you to see games—and your own capabilities—differently is to play a game with you.
So let’s play a game together—right now.
I challenge you to complete four life-changing quests in the next five minutes.
Don’t worry, it’s easier than it sounds. I’ve watched some amazing people complete the same four quests you’re about to undertake—including Oprah Winfrey, legendary skateboarder and entrepreneur Tony Hawk, and Colonel Bat Masterson, the surgeon general for the U.S. Armed Forces. If they can do it, you can do it, too.
These are the first four quests that every SuperBetter player completes. I guarantee that if you successfully complete them all, roughly five minutes from now you will already be a stronger person—mentally, emotionally, physically, and socially. (You’ll also have a much better idea of how this book can help you unleash your gameful qualities.)
Ready to play? Let’s go!
THE GAME STARTS NOW
Here’s your first life-changing quest. I want you to complete it, right now, before you read any further.
Do not skip this first quest. I repeat: DO NOT SKIP THIS QUEST. If you skip it, you’ll be tempted to skip others—and then the game will be over before you’ve even started playing. So here we go. Your first quest—I know you can do it!
QUEST 1: Physical Resilience
Pick one:
Stand up and take three steps.
or
Make your hands into fists and hold them over your head as high as you can for five seconds.
Go!
Did you do it? Well done!
By completing this quest, you’ve just boosted your physical resilience.
Physical resilience is your body’s ability to withstand stress and heal itself. And research shows that the number-one thing people can do to boost their physical resilience is to not sit still. Whenever you sit still for more than a few minutes, your body starts to shut down at the metabolic level. This shutdown negatively impacts every aspect of your health, from your immune system to your ability to handle stress.7
Every single second you’re not sitting still, however, you’re actively improving the health of your heart, your lungs, and your brain.8 You’ll have more energy and sleep better, too—which is crucial when you’re facing a hard challenge, even if it isn’t primarily physical in nature.
So stand up for just one second. Take three steps. Throw your arms in the air. That’s all it takes. You are now physically stronger than you were thirty seconds ago.
Ready for your next quest?
QUEST 2: Mental Resilience
Pick one:
Snap your fingers exactly fifty times
or
Count backward from 100 by 7, like this: 100, 93 . . . all the way to at least 0.
Go!
All done? Good work.
By completing this quest, you’ve just increased your mental resilience.
Mental resilience is motivation, focus, and willpower—strengths that are essential to achieving any goal.
Researchers have figured out that willpower is like a muscle. It gets stronger the more you exercise it—as long as you don’t exhaust it.9 Accomplishing tiny challenges—even ones as absurd as snapping your fingers exactly fifty times or counting backward by seven—helps you exercise this muscle without wearing it out. That means you’re more likely to have the motivation