The Dark Souls Mindset That Changed My Life
Dark Souls is one of those things that you know has a deeper meaning. The problem is most people feel that meaning but can’t explain it. That’s been my whole goal to translate Dark Souls to English. I’ve realized a universal truth from the game that shows up everywhere in life. It doesn’t matter if we’re talking about your purpose, your relationships, your job, your school, running, meditating, lifting weights, working out, playing Dark Souls, it’s all connected to the same hidden law.
Problems and failures aren’t a bad thing. They are the way forward. The core of this video is Dark Souls, right? That’s where the philosophy comes from. But I am going to be referencing all over the place to different media and experiences because I want to convey to you guys that this is everywhere. Okay, I want to I want to say it so clearly to you guys. Let’s do it. When you fight a boss in Dark Souls, you will fail.
Actually, the game is designed for you to fail. You die, you learn. Each death teaches you something new. And slowly by failing over and over, you incrementally correct yourself until you finally beat the boss. It’s not that failure blocks you because failure is the process. The boss fight isn’t about perfection. It’s about persistence. And life is the same way. Actually,
Life isn’t just about passing on your genes. We can leave behind much more than just DNA through speech, music, literature, and movies. What we’ve seen, heard, felt, anger, joy, and sorrow. These are the things I will pass on. We need to pass the torch and let our children read our messy and sad history by its light. The human race will probably come to an end sometime, and a new species may rule over this planet. Earth may not be forever, but we still
Have the responsibility to leave what traces of life we can. Building the future and keeping the past alive are one and the same thing. That was a line from the game Metal Gear Solid 2. And it’s okay if you don’t know what that is, but I just think that it really illuminates the point of what I’m trying to make here. It means even the bad stuff matters. The failures, the small and seemingly unimportant moments, they’re part of what we leave behind.
Failures aren’t wasted. They shape us. They teach us. They make us grow. They even give the people who come after us a guide to life, even after we’re gone. Failures act as guard rails for the bowling ball that leads to our success. We think that we’re going off course, but the guardrail is actually just showing us and correcting our trajectory, telling us where to go. >> If you get everything you want the minute you want it, what’s the point of
Living? >> If success came instantly, then it wouldn’t mean anything. The point of living is to not always have the success, but to maybe mess up sometimes and try and fail, but then recorrect your course and turn the losses or failures into an eventual win, just like Dark Souls, which is more earned in the end and something you can actually be proud of, which would make you more happy and it would make it more of a
Success. For example, an argument with your girlfriend could technically be seen as a failure, but the way that you guys handle it together determines if you guys are actually just attracted to each other or if there’s something strong there, a foundation to build off of and and live a life together off of that. Every argument is a test. Do you blame each other or do you work together as a team? If you handle it well, your
Bond strengthens. If you don’t, over time, you start to see the truth right before your eyes that maybe you guys are not made for each other. Maybe you guys are not right for each other. Maybe it’s time to move on to someone better suiting to you. Either way, it’s a win because you grow. Failure isn’t wasted. It’s feedback. It’s an opportunity to grow. And yet sometimes we take things too far and make things harder for ourselves by creating imaginary
Problems. We blow up small issues until they feel bigger than they really are. And we forget the real good things that are consistently in front of us. Problems are actually a good thing. But if you think of imaginary problems, then that can lead you down the wrong path. And then that is how problems become bad. Yukio Mishima wrote about this in his book Sun and Steel. The men who indulge in nocturnal thought, “It seemed to me
Without exception had dry, lustrous skins and sagging stomachs. Yet why must it be that men always seek out the depths, the abyss? If nothing is wrong and we’re wellfed and we’re safe inside our homes and we have everything that we really could ever want, why do we conjure such nasty beliefs in our heads? Sure, it can be true that something needs to change, but looking at the privilege that we have and then having the audacity to think that we know
Anything about the abyss, that we know the darkest, deepest corners of our brains because we sit inside and our mom brings us food and we pick our nose and we wipe the chip dust off our fingers on our pants. Like, that is absurd. We blow up small issues until they feel bigger than they are. And we forget the real good things that are consistently in front of us. But perhaps something does actually need to change. Perhaps we do suffer because
We are not using ourselves to our highest potential because we are not living to our deepest realization.
David Da talks about this deepest realization in his book, The Way of the Superior Man. If you’re not living according to what you know you should be doing, the work that calls to you, then you won’t feel fulfilled. No matter how useful you are to others, you could be helping people, paying bills, doing actually good, putting good into the world, you know, taking care of people, but if it’s not that thing that’s calling out to you, that’s always in
Your mind at every every day, then you won’t feel happy. You’ll feel like you’re wasting your time. If it isn’t calling to you like it’s your current purpose, then you’ll feel it. The YouTuber Hamza describes purpose like layers of an onion. You can only peel one at a time. You complete one layer and the next reveals itself. When you fully live one layer and complete it, the next one opens. But if you ignore the layer that’s calling to you right
Now, you’ll feel guilty and restless and depressed. Even when you’re not living your purpose, you start conjuring imaginary problems. You sit in your room under your LED strips thinking you’re in the abyss feeling hopeless because you’re not actually doing the thing that you know you should be doing. But when you are pursuing your goals, you’re too busy to entertain those thoughts. You might be failing, sure, but failing forward at least. You’re adjusting and correcting and making progress. And that
Progress makes the so-called abyss disappear. Sometimes you just need to be a little stupid. Not like an actual idiot, but in the sense of not overthinking every little thing. Don’t give imaginary problems oxygen. If you’ve got something real to work toward, like your purpose, your your deepest realization, why would you waste energy sweating over the small stuff? The intellectual smart guy will be like, “Oh, you don’t care about this? If I were you, I would care about this.
If I was you, that would really bother me. But you, who are actually smarter than the smart guy, are strategically stupid and you’re like, “No, no, it doesn’t bother me. What? What? No, it doesn’t bother me, man. No.” Instead of being the smart guy who overthinks and analyzes every little thing, by being stupid, you’re actually smarter than the smart guy. You realize that? Don’t dwell on small, stupid, imaginary things. Be a little stupid and get back to what matters.
Okay, so what am I trying to say with all this? This is the Dark Souls mindset. The belief that problems and failures are not actually problems and failures. They’re proof you’re alive. Every death, every mistake, every argument, every setback, they’re not the end of the path. They are the path. They’re the guard rails shaping you into who you’re meant to become. That’s what Snake was saying in Metal Gear Solid 2. Even our anger, sorrow, and mistakes are
Worth passing on. That’s what Mishima was warning about. Don’t waste yourself conjuring fake problems. Problems are actually a good thing, but if you start thinking of imaginary problems, then they’ll take you on like a weird wrong path, and then that’s when they become bad. Jake said in Adventure Time, “Pros are what make life meaningful.” So carry forward this one mindset. Don’t run from problems. Don’t fear failure. Take responsibility for everything. And maybe you’re thinking like, “Okay, but this is
Hard for me to do. Why would I do that? I don’t feel like doing it.” You know, but it’s actually not a hard thing to do. If you think like okay any problem that comes your way if you can just think in the moment you know you don’t have to take any action but just think in the moment keep this mindset in mind like actually this could be a good thing you know it’s not a hard thing to do it’s
Just a mindset shift just train this whole video is basically just I want you to train your brain to be like this could actually be a good thing. What can I take from this? Take responsibility for everything. Even if it technically wasn’t your fault, whatever problem happened, take responsibility for it. Because that’s how change happens. If you take responsibility for everything, then you can change everything. You can change anything. If you’re always giving the responsibility away, it was his fault.
It was her fault. not my fault. Don’t look at me. Then nothing is ever going to change for your favor. It’s never going to be the way that you want it to be. It’s always going to be unsatisfactory. You’re always going to be complaining about something new. Take responsibility for it in your own head. Just think, what can I do better? Is there anything I can do to make it better? Is there anything I can do to improve?
This doesn’t have to be a bad thing. Taking responsibility turns problems into progress. Blaming others leaves you with nothing but resentment for yourself. Not even for them, just for yourself. Treat every loss as part of your training, as another hint towards the success that you actually really want. Treat every problem not as a loss, but as proof that you’re getting closer and closer to those goals that you want. If you keep showing up and trying to
Make things better, you won’t go hollow. And you better not go hollow. I’m going to turn this Dark Souls mindset into a course in my new community. There was a lot in this video that I wanted to say, but I cut out because I didn’t want the video to be so long. I didn’t want it to be confusing. I thought that it would be a smarter idea to turn it into like modules, like five or 10 minute videos that are easily
Digestible that all make sense together. Because if I just made it a bunch of YouTube videos in the same way, then it would not make sense, you know? it would be like scattered and it it wouldn’t all be um the same thought process. If it’s all in a course together under the same umbrella, then I think it’s a better way of presenting it. So, if you’re interested about hearing like more about the different sections, I go more into
Like adventure time. I go more into Metal Gear. I go more into relationships. I go there was stuff that I just cut out of the video completely. If you want to hear more about this Dark Souls mindset and you want to hear more about how it’s relevant in all of our daily lives, then consider joining. I’m not going to force you. I’m just telling you why I’m passionate about it, why I think it’s a good idea. I think it’s a
Good investment of your time. So, if that sounds interesting to you, then click the link in the bio, I mean description, and um don’t go hollow. That’s everything. You guys take care. Okay.