Becoming the god of war

“ To live only for some future goal is shallow. It's the sides of the mountain that sustain life, not the top. Here is where things grow” - Robert M Pirsig

I have always enjoyed playing video games, and one video game series I have played over the years is called “God of War.” It tells the story of a Spartan warrior who, in his hour of need, calls on the Greek god Ares to help him win a battle. For once, the god aids the hero of the story, Kratos, and grants him the power to defeat his enemies. But—it’s a Faustian pact because now Kratos is Ares’ war machine; he must do the war god’s bidding. At one point, on a murderous rampage at the request of Ares, Kratos destroys a village and accidentally kills his wife and child.

This is a turning point; Kratos now vows revenge. Eventually, across many games, Kratos does indeed get revenge and himself becomes the god of war by killing Ares.

In the latest installment of the game series, we find a new type of Kratos. He has escaped the Mediterranean and has made a new life for himself in the north, in Scandinavia, where he is trying to escape his god status. He starts a family and is laying low.

Unfortunately, his wife dies (not entirely clear how that happened). She was from the Norse race of giants and her last wish was that her ashes should be scattered on top of a high mountain in Asgard. The game is the usual action-adventure but also requires Kratos to manage his anger and be a father to his 11-year-old son Loki.

So far, so good. The game is enjoyable and as you progress you gain new abilities and become more and more powerful. Near the end of the game, I was feeling pretty good about my skills. At this point, the game takes a hard left turn.

Your final challenge is to defeat a series of characters called the Valkyrie.

At this point in the game, I was feeling pretty confident, having defeated multiple other gods, and so I stepped into the arena with the first of 8 Valkyrie opponents. About 3 seconds later, my character Kratos had been killed.

All the skills that I had learned so far in the game were of no use to me now. The game designers had stepped up the level of skill required by about one hundredfold. This seemed impossible. How could I defeat this enemy? It was all too fast and too brutal for me to manage. But sure enough, on the tenth try, I started to get the hang of it; after the 50th, I was almost winning. I lost track of the number of attempts I made at this, but eventually, I won, and the satisfaction was immense. I could have given up at any time as I had finished the main part of the game, but I was compelled to continue to see if I was able to complete this challenge.

Great, that was done; only 7 more Valkyries to go! And then something remarkable happened. The game requires you to travel around the Norse mythical world and find the other Valkyrie, and as you travel, you encounter all kinds of nasty enemies hell-bent on stopping you.

That was when I realized that I was the god of war.

When I had been attacked by these enemies earlier in the game, I had to concentrate to win. Now, after defeating the Valkyrie, these enemies seemed easy to defeat. I was almost playing with how I would do it; the upgrade in my skills and confidence by defeating an almost impossible was profound. It also made the game far more enjoyable. It allowed me to feel like a god and wield the power in a way that was not forced but almost balletic.

I became the god of war by focusing on a growth mindset and taking on difficult challenges not for the results but for the overall improvement. The game showed me the value of a challenge system that could enhance my growth.

You can look at challenges in two ways: the closed mindset will tell you to ignore them or to call them impossible, but the growth mindset will see them as a necessary part of growth. When you go to the gym and lift a heavyweight to increase your strength, you can see that lifting the weight is a challenge, but you also know that if you do it enough, you will be stronger and fitter.

For most challenges in life, it is not entirely clear what the end benefit may be to you if you try a challenge and then fail and try again. Some things are impossible, but quite a few things, especially the things you can practice, are not impossible and are just like that weight in the gym. You're not going to enjoy doing it the first few times, but after a while, you start to see that what was hard before is now easier. You start to feel all the other benefits that doing this challenge can give you.

Write 400 words a day and you will have your book within a year and be a better email writer to boot. Draw every day, and you will have your exhibition. Knit every day, and you will have your hat for winter and know how to make other clothes. Read every day, and you will have interesting things to think about and talk with friends about for the rest of your life.

Outcomes can be obscured by the mountain that is the challenge, but as you climb, you start to feel the benefits of the effort; it sustains you, and after a while, it's the climb that matters, not the goal.