Game in the Brain

I use Visualization as a tool for work. The way RPG hone Visualization, it allows me to visualize things in great detail. RPGs teach me to narrate and tell stories, but because we solve problems in RPGs we have to tell a story that will immediately connect with our audience’s visualization process. Thats why I tend to be very immersed in story telling, with a lot of gestures and side comments describe things in great detail.

Visualization is a skill that allows normal people, normal people are very visual. So honing their visual intelligence allows them to “borrow” that specialized processor to allow them to anticipate problems and look for greater amounts of detail in something they are visualizing.

One sample use of visualization is going through processes and procedures and looking for the motions we do as we go about the activity. Another is being able to predict and anticipate barriers and limitations. We take memories of things we’ve done and recycle it into a visualization of a experience we will expect.

We get an uncomfortable experience burned into our memory, then we go through it again but change some factors and assumptions but hold on to that discomfort and all those emotions that tangle our mind as we go through the simulated event.

One interesting thing I realized growing up is that as a young person, I had unbridled and very naive optimism. A mindset that could have been rapidly matured by visualizing the challenges I would too soon wish to forget. often When i ask the OJTs they cannot visualize the hardship they may face, thus cannot even begin to describe what kind of sacrifice they may have to make as they work towards their goals.

This Imagination exercise helps emotionally prepare us and allows us to conveniently explore ourselves in the “darker side”. Visualization allows me to see myself in a difficult situation and go through this difficult experience which then allows me to better have a feel of aspects of myself and my priorities that I only find under stress. The ability to come back to normal allows me to think more rationally about my emotions and how I would react under the stress.

The first thing I realize when they couldn’t give an answer is that “Where was the fear your parents instilled in you?”. The fear and appreciation your parents gave you when they narrated their own hardship to you, so that you understand the value of what you have because of their suffering? My parents and grand parents would tell the tall tales of their suffering, it gets old, but it is nonetheless and incredible experience to visualize and to imagine as if we went through it with them.

The stories of my Grandfather in WW2 when the japanese invaded and the tears he shed telling me of how helpless he was when the japanese invaded this household that sheltered him when Manila was devastated. I wish I could go to that house and meet the family who sheltered him, and how these experiences made him such a stern and almost humorless man. These stories and our immersion in them helps us empathize and see more things.

Its like hacking a resource to do something it has the potential to do, but not meant to do. Which leads to the creation of a new resource, one which provides an unusual and rare advantage.

So the skill allows me to visualize the hardship and the sacrifices, so that I can already judge what costs I’m willing to pay and what I really want out of life. Its no big deal of skill; but a skill that allows us to find out more about ourselves, and knowing more about ourselves helps us decide what is best for us.