Stay Positive

Change, this is a thing that some people love and are willing to try and make happen themselves, while others dread change and hope that their life stays exactly the same. Those are the people I like to call cowards. Others, like myself, are stuck somewhere there in the middle.

Most people get seem to get caught up in a daily routine, and if one thing gets altered from their daily routine the person gets totally thrown off. And this is what seems to me to be a big reason for people having “bad” days. I believe that days like that should not be considered “bad,” but instead they should be labeled “different.” The only days that need to be labeled bad are tragic ones, like a relative dying or someone close being injured.

Part of life is learning how to adapt to change, but sometimes our lives can seem to be going amazingly well at a certain point, and a person might want it to stay the same. But even though everything is so good, there is only one place to go when you are at the top and that is down. This is why people that have less, seem to be happier to me because they only have one place to go, and that is up.

The people that take on change like my dog eats his treats, which he just goes straight after them with nothing holding him back, those are the people that I believe live life to the fullest. When something good happens I your life, you want to keep it that way right? But, what if an even better opportunity presents Itself to you, but you are too scared that that change will mess up the vibe you got going. That is when a person can mess up, in my opinion, you should take that opportunity. Even though the first little bit will be tough because you have to adjust, it will turn out better in the end, as long as you stay positive.

That leads me to my personal example, in my situation; I didn’t have a choice in what happened. My knee was messed up and there was only one way to fix it. Surgery, and six months of rehab. So I could have either sat around and cried like a baby and not done anything to get better, or I could work my butt off and come back to play baseball better than I ever have before. I took the latter route.

I changed my attitude, and started to work hard, lifting weights, running, going to physical therapy and pretty much anything else you can think of, and now look; I recovered from a terrible injury and my whole body, not just my leg, is stronger than before. Balls I hit that one hopped the fence last year are going over this year. And now I am right up there in the tops for the state with many different statistics.

Moral of the story…move on from the past, embrace, and create your own future.

Arguments

Why do we always argue so much? This I want to know. I myself seem to get into many arguments myself. Partly because I find it fun to argue with people because when someone gets mad they say things that they don’t mean to say. They also say things and they don’t come out right. People always seem to repeat themselves a lot in an argument. Now, I understand that there are some things that need to be argued about, subjects that have to do with the well being of our country and what not, but there are also many things that don’t need to be argued about. Things like teammates arguing with each other in sports, or a husband and wife that argue all the time. I don’t like the thought of divorces, in my mind if two people choose to spend the rest of their lives together, they should. There shouldn’t be any thoughts of infidelity or unfaithfulness. You made a choice and you should stick with it. I believe that poor choices are the reason for most arguments. I also believe that if you are mad at some person for some reason, you should tell them. Just telling a person that you believe that they are doing something wrong will make them want to change a little. That is how it has been for me; I just wish people would tell me more often, because when they do, I try my best to change, because I want to be able to please people.  That is why I try not to argue with people, because once they have their mind made up, there is pretty much no way to change what they believe.

Also, people are made to get along, but since there is so much negative going on in our world, most of us are unable to see what is actually happening. Science has come to the conclusion that if you put a group of random people in a situation like being in a giant hole, they will work together to find a way out of that situation and find a way to safety.

So, I believe that if we have fewer arguments, more agreements and if we try to work together more than we do now, I believe that we would all be happier.

Why Do We Play Video Games

Many gamers spend countless hours saving princesses, shooting bad-guys, and fighting our way through multiple bosses, but what keeps us coming back to these wonderful and or not so wonderful experiences? Many researchers around the world studied that videogames have multiple affects on our society: how they discourage violence, inspire creativity, and or nurture laziness. However, people rarely ask why we play videogames in the first place. What drives us to collect coins, kill zombies, or roam around the cities looking for people to assassinate? Scientists and psychologists have now only began to understand why. But unlocking the mystery behind this desire may do more than help us understand our obsession- it could- possibly help shape our society.

Some gamers (not all) throw around the term "escapism" when talking about their many hobbies, but this is only a brief/hollow explanation for what actually motivates us to play games. The word "escapism" contains some negative implications suggesting that those who play games feel the need to break fee from their slavery of the real world or their reality. I personally enjoy retreats to other realities, I mean who doesn't, ones more fantastical than our own- but not always are we driven to play games just to escape our real world lives. The real motivations we play games are more far complex then we could imagine, and fulfill several-real world human needs, in many positive ways. We all have psychological needs, and these needs operate all the time - when people are at work, school, or when we play videogames. These specific needs are always operating. Games perfectly target these needs. These needs classify into three categories . The first need is for competence. Competence is that desire to seek control or to feel mastery over situations. People like to feel successful, and growing in knowledge and accomplishments. This need plays out in various real life situations, for example: when people decide to switch jobs or go back to school, because their career isn't rewarding or challenging enough to suit their needs. It's also easy to see how videogames make us feel more accomplished. Like when we level in any RPG or MMORPG games, or when we spend countless hours beating a game fulfill our desires to feel competent.

Our second psychological need is autonomy. Autonomy is the desire to feel independent or have certain amount of control over our actions. This need permeates nearly every fact of our culture. The drive toward autonomy is why people don't like being manipulated. That's why imprisonment is a punishment, and why we feel an urge to rebel against slavery. This is why game series that offer gamers a variety of free choices - The Elder Scrolls series and Grand Theft Auto - are so popular. "Terrible Two's" are a great example of a need for autonomy. It's not terrible for the kid, it's terrible for the parent(s) to hear their kid say 'no' all the time.

The final psychological need is relatedness. We like to feel like we matter, or have an important role in life, like we are making a significant contribution to society. It's easy to see how games can fulfill, playing games with friends online, but oddly enough you can still meet this need even when playing by yourself. The way that gamers are written, or their style of gameplay, this can generally be met when players are talking to an in-game character, or NPC (N on Playable Character). NPCs are often structured around helping them, find or collect treasures and or kill people.

Over many years we gravitated towards experiences that make us feel more competent, more autonomous, and more related to these experiences make us feel good, and mentally healthy. These needs however, can also be met at school, at work, or playing sports. But psychologists have just discovered video games are the most seductive and efficient method of meeting all these needs.