Can you have satisfaction despite the pain?

Have you ever done something, which brings you great satisfaction now, but afterwards it brings you pain?

I've participated in a charity volleyball tournament yesterday. It was demanding - 12 hours under the sun and playing. For not professional player this is nightmare believe me! You get sunburns (you better put tons of sun protection lotion to prevent it), muscle fever (delayed onset muscle soreness) and in the worst case some traumas (I got out of the tourney without one, thank God). The point is it was totally worth it for me, because I know I'm helping people in need. Not to mention the atmosphere, fair play, lots of fun, jokes between the teams. In the end, I'm willing to bear the muscle fever on the next days because I know the cause is good and I feel great about it.

It doesn't always end up like that. Sometimes the pain is greater than the satisfaction (long term I mean) and those are bad deals! For example, doing something you don't enjoy for money. Even if it's well paid, you'll start to feel bad about it and the pain will be too much in the long run.

My point is you can do both. Sometimes you need to do something which causes you more pain than satisfaction! It's inevitable. But make sure most of the time your satisfaction from each activity is much greater than the pain!

Keep learning and may the Force be with you.

Giving Up to Win! Are You Willing to Do It?

Great news came lately to Star Wars Galaxy of Heroes – Grand Admiral Thrawn! As with all good news to some they were bad news to others. All of us, who didn't invest in gearing Phoenix squadron, lost because we couldn't obtain Thrawn. He is my second favorite character in the Star Wars universe (after Yoda of course). As you can guess I’m quite disappointed from this fact.

I managed to get my Phoenix squadron to 4 stars. You need five heroes with 5 stars to unlock him. So, after I spent some time, energy and resources I realized it will not be possible, without sacrificing my other priorities (farming gear and mods for my main characters), to unlock him. Although it saddens me that such a favorite character won't be in my roaster for some time it was the right decision to make. Which brings me to my point. Fail fast so that you can learn from it and mitigate the negative effects. In my case I spent 7 days and some effort to realize it is not feasible. I will now put those characters needed for unlocking him as a side project and work on them when I have free resources.

Know your priorities and get into action as soon as possible, so that you can fail faster! Believe me, failure will happen a lot, so you might as well try to make it worth by speeding up the failure process.

Keep learning and may the Force be with you!

Did You Saw That Terrible Blizzard Match Making?

Last night I was playing a match in Heroes of the Storm with a friend. We got some pretty though matchmaking and he started to complain about it. Have you been in such situation?

I believe we often find ourselves in such situation where we have a choice. We can either blame the game, it's algorithm, the other players – in short everything else but not us. Or, we can accept the situation and try to do our best to help others, bring your full potential and be the best version of yourself.

As for the example above, we won! But it was because of a team work, constructive discussion and a lot of help and coordination. It's not easy to try and be constructive, but it's worth it and you feel satisfaction at such a high level that it can't be explained.

One last example from Star Wars Galaxy of Heroes. We have a rule of 50k damage in the first 24 hours of the raid. A guildmate violated it for second time. It was easier to just kick her out. Instead we tried to communicate and find out why this happened (again that choice). In the end, she is still with us and aware of the rule – no more violations.

When faced with a choice remember that you can always go back to kicking people out or blaming the game, but first try the other way around!

Keep learning and may the Force be with you!

Are You Leading?

Is it possible to become a leader (even virtual) from games? Though question, I'd say. To answer it we need to define some points to which we'll have to compare.

First point is that we are talking about a person who others are willing to follow, not a simple manager or tyrant who oversees people and processes. Second, the leader must care for his people and do his best to help them grow and learn. Third, he must be authentic. In other words when he says something he has to do it. And last, but not least he must admit his errors and try to hear all viewpoints.

That being said, let's see what my experience says about it. I'll be using Star Wars Galaxy of Heroes game as it has guilds and needs team coordination to achieve certain milestones. Some time ago, I created a guild (actually, on the day EA released this feature). At the beginning, it was more or less experimenting until we reached a moment where we had to have some rules. Then someone had to monitor following those rules (btw we lost some valuable members due to violations). Here is the process we went through:

• First thing was that I as a leader of the guild had to give up my power to other guild members and the authority to act on my behalf. Note that those are people I've never met before. Still giving up power and trusting people is one of the most powerful tool any leader could master.
• Second thing was we made a private Google+ page where we could help each other grow and learn more about the game, by sharing videos, images from our own gaming experience and stuff like that.
• Third thing was that we needed to align the rules with all guild members. Some discussions, multiple reworks of the rules and we were there (together as a team). I'd say we all made some compromises, but the final result was accepted by all. 
• And the last thing we did was constantly helping new members with advice, strategies and sometimes jokes, to overcome the challenges they were facing during their growth as a player.

We are far from perfect, and we are yet to reach another milestone of beating a Heroic AAT Raid, but I'm pretty confident we can do it as a team. All Officers and more experienced members are learning to be leaders whether they realize it or not. It's up to your judgment to decide whether you can learn leadership from games or not.

Keep learning and may the Force be with you!

Are You the King’s Friend or Foe?

Warning: There might be spoilers ahead so consider yourselves warned!

Today we are not talking about games! Hah, gotcha! But, it will be close. I just came back from a movie “King Arthur: Legend for the Sword”. There are two main moments that captured my attention most. I don’t claim to give you the exact phrases from the movie, you’ll rather get my interpretations. That said let’s dive right in.

First one - everyone is turning their eyes away from something which they don’t want to see. Sounds philosophical? You can bet it is! Still, so much true. Each of us is facing his own demons, and constantly turning his head around, because it’s easier not to face them. The moral: the moment you take responsibility for your past, for each action you have taken, no matter what pushed you to this action is the moment you feel freedom. You feel in control! Of course, in movies it’s much easier for the main hero, right? But my friends, be the main heroes of your life!

Second moral, came at the very end of the movie in a simple sentence (paraphrasing here): “Friends are much more valuable than enemies”. And it’s so very true again! Have you ever tried arguing with a colleague? Angrily defending your thesis! Did that ever get the job done? You must be friends with your colleague if you wish to get to the desired outcome! It’s the same with guildmates, family, you fill the rest of this sentence with whoever you wish. I’ve argued with a lot of people in my life, so try to avoid my mistake. It’s much more helpful to become friends, look in the same direction and get things done.

That’s it! Keep making friends, learning and may the Force be with you!

P.S. Sorry for these too many exclamation marks. And a big thank you to all of you for spending the time to read this! I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comment below.