The Bounce Ball Effect
The art of forcing yourself to uncomfortable states by blocking the main source of the act.
First of all, this is about something I came up with when dealing with some of my life’s situations. Most of you may have played this little retro game called ‘Bounce Ball’ where you will need to control the ball up, right and left to get to a finishing line through some deadly obstacles. Therefore the idea is basically to get the ball to the black and white flag without getting killed. Right? WRONG!
The Game
If you got everything you want easily, will you be able to appreciate it’s worth? If everything was easy, wouldn’t everyone be doing it? Subjectively speaking, if you could get the ball to the finish line just by clicking one little button, what’s in it for you? Would you be satisfied?
Imagine the screen you are playing (The playground) is your life and the obstacles you need to pass through are the hard times and the uncomfortable situations you need to face, and the ball? Yes, it’s you. Hard or difficult times are a struggle which one needs to overcome to survive and overcome all odds. Life isn’t easy and won’t happen as per one’s wishes and desires. Life will throw everything upon an individual and the more the individual face such hardships and strive, more strong and confident he is bound to become. What doesn’t kills you makes you stronger.
Everything is in constant flux/change and nothing is permanent or fixed. To adapt, adjust one needs to cope with the changing surrounding to survive better and be successful. The more one endures, suffers pain and misery the more strong-willed, focus and determined he is bound to become. Struggles only strengthen you, and only the strong survive while the weak fade or wither away.
The playground may change its level of difficulty depending on your family background, financial level, mental health, etc. Every freaking guy/girl who is reading this right now is struggling for survival in their own way. It can be life, education, relationships, and whatnot. It’s not easy to live unless you keep trying harder and harder. It’s a test against time, one's ability to match the skill required to overcome hard times. Harder, we face the more resilient and hardy we become.
Bounce Ball Effect?
Here is my point of view of overcoming the hard times and how to hack the ‘Game’. First, You need to specifically identify what causes the trouble? Like in the Bounce Ball when you have a deflator (You can’t hit it or you will die) in front of you, you need to find the little switch that will hide it (Remove it from the ground) from your path, in other words, you need to block that in order to get through it right? This is what I call the bounce ball effect.
For a real-life example, let me share one of my experiences. I had a bad habit of playing a computer game over and over again when I had free time. So what I did was since the game required windows platform to run, I formatted my computer and installed ubuntu. After installing ubuntu I had no choice but not to play the game and it did save me a lot of my spare time. See how I blocked the source of the main act and it totally works! But you must pass that one-time barrier where you need to force your self to an uncomfortable situation (In this story where I formatted the PC).
Make it a Habit
After that, you must have to continue blocking the source for a while until it becomes a habit of yours. Phillippa Lally is a health psychology researcher at University College London. In a study published in the European Journal of Social Psychology, Lally and her research team decided to figure out just how long it actually takes to form a habit.
The study examined the habits of 96 people over a 12-week period. Each person chose one new habit for the 12 weeks and reported each day on whether or not they did the behavior and how automatic the behavior felt. Some people chose simple habits like “drinking a bottle of water with lunch.” Others chose more difficult tasks like “running for 15 minutes before dinner.” At the end of the 12 weeks, the researchers analyzed the data to determine how long it took each person to go from starting a new behavior to automatically doing it.
The answer?
On average, it takes more than 2 months before a new behavior becomes automatic — 66 days to be exact. And how long it takes a new habit to form can vary widely depending on the behavior, the person, and the circumstances. In Lally’s study, it took anywhere from 18 days to 254 days for people to form a new habit.
In the end, all of these are just thoughts. I hope you get something out of it!
Peace!
