Why You Should Live On Default Settings ► Explained With Dark Souls
Have you ever felt like you have a million tabs open in your brain? An endless list of ideas, things you want to do, things you need to do, really just everything. And there’s just too much on your mind at any given moment. What ends up happening is that nothing gets done. Work days are unproductive, work piles up, nothing you want to do ever actually gets done. You have so many things going on to the point where
Every morning you wake up, you have decision paralysis. And I was the same. I used to just stay in bed because I didn’t even know where to start. Years go by and it just feels like wasted time and potential. But then I played the game Dark Souls and it made me realize that we don’t give enough credit to the default character in games. You know who I’m talking about. When you start any new game, it gives you a bunch of
Options for different classes, magic, pyromancy, sneaky, whatever. And out of all these options, you choose the default starter guy. He’s the most reliable, the least complicated, the And the best part of choosing him is you can upgrade him to be however you want later. Since his skill set is distributed already, you can choose to focus on magic or pyromancy anytime you like. The default character is kind of the goat. And I was thinking about this default character in games and it made
Me realize something. The things in my life right now are overwhelming me. I have too much going on, too many interests and plans and endeavors. And all of them are nice on their own, but all together, I just feel like I would rather not do any of them and just stay in bed. I get decision paralysis. And that’s why I think you should live your life on default settings. Because if you’ve ever felt like life is getting to
Be too much, you can’t keep up with all the hobbies and people and work in your life, then I think we kind of need to take a step back and get back to basics. You don’t need to fix your life or just work harder, you need to simplify it. Because think about it. When you have all these different things that you want to do, you really want to take the gym seriously and build some huge muscles and you also want to
Work hard on your personal project and you also want to learn how to play the guitar, calisthenics, car mechanics, all these different goals of yours and endeavors. But you never end up actually making progress in any of them. And that’s honestly fine. If you want to just try something once to see if you actually like it and you have all these different things you want to try, then just trying them all for the first time is a good place to start when finding
Something you actually really enjoy. But if you actually want to make progress in all these things at the same time, then you’re going to run into some trouble. Think about it like in Dark Souls. When you just start out, if you try to level up your strength and magic and intelligence all equally, then you’re really just going to have kind of a shitty build. It’s not really a magic build because your strength is also leveled equally. And you’re also not a
Strength build because your dexterity is leveled the same. Now, this is an okay place to start off. This is how we start when we’re the default character, equal across the board. But if you continue to try to grow everything at the same rate, then you’ll just stay the same forever. Not really bad, but also not very good. So, what you need to do is start as the default character for sure. Dabble in however many interests you want. Know a
Little bit about everything, jack-of-all-trades. But then how you proceed is very important. You need to cut out the noise and focus on just one, maybe two different areas of improvement and dedicate all your time and resources to just those things. If you want strength in Dark Souls, focus on leveling your strength. Simple, right? If you want to have kind of a magic build, you might want to level up your intelligence and maybe faith. You have to intentionally choose to focus on just
One or two things so that you can actually progress in those things. And the thing is that this has never been a problem for us in Dark Souls. I’ve never heard of someone doing this. In Dark Souls, you usually just get a feel for the game and then choose what you want to focus on. In the game, it’s easy to focus in on a just a select few things. So then why do we do the opposite in
Real life? Why do we overwhelm ourselves and try to be everything when we already know from Dark Souls that that’s not going to be very effective. You go to sleep thinking that you’re literally going to conquer the world and then when you wake up, you realize that you actually signed yourself up for a lot of different things. Maybe you won’t be able to complete everything like you thought you would. And when you wake up, you look at this big list of things you
Promised yourself you would do today and you just don’t even know where to start. You’re paralyzed and so you end up just staying in bed and doing absolutely none of it. And then to top it all off, even when you manage to roll yourself out of bed at like 1:00 p.m. and actually start just doing one of the things you wanted to do, you end up getting distracted. Now, the new issue is that people keep pulling you away from what you actually
Want to do. You end up just looking at your phone or video games or talking to people or whatever. You just can’t seem to make it work and do the things you actually want to do. There’s too much to do and not enough time to do it all. You’re not actually a lazy person. You can do hard work, but you just feel overwhelmed because it’s like you’re trying to live too many different lives at once. You get decision paralysis from
All the things you want to do. And you make yourself believe that that makes you lazy. And then even when you try your best to make an effort, you just get pulled away from it by your job or friends or family or whatever. By the time the day is over, there’s no more time left for the one thing you actually wanted to do. Sometimes that’s just the way life is. But sometimes there’s something you can do about it. And
That’s prioritizing the select few things in your life which are actually important to you and cutting out all the rest of the noise. I know this might sound more like an ideal. Like, yeah, that sounds great, but easier said than done. Maybe you’ve even tried something like this before, but you found it was too tiring or it didn’t leave you enough time to relax and have fun. But let me ask you something. Is your goal to do
Your goals or is your goal to relax and have fun? You’re going to be tired at the end of the day regardless. So, why not actually be proud of yourself rather than just keep living the same disappointing and uneventful day over and over again. You need to design your day to be like a mission. Give yourself an actual goal. Don’t just generally say, “I want to do this and that.” because that won’t actually get you anywhere. If your goal is to make
Yourself actually progress, you need to choose a path, a mission, and work toward that mission. If you stretch yourself too thin and give yourself too much to think about, then naturally you’ll be overwhelmed. So, what’s the opposite of that? Giving yourself less to worry about, right? You need to cut out the noise in your life, especially things you know are just extra stuff in your life and the things that you know you can probably just stop doing right
Now. Like coming home after work and just eating and watching videos until it’s time to go to sleep. Or taking constant breaks to check Instagram and then end up scrolling for an hour. Because we know for sure that it’s just excess in our life, right? Scrolling is not helping you. So, focus on just doing your mission. People like family and friends can be a little more complicated, though. You can’t cut off your mom just because she’s too
Distracting, right? But then what can you do? People are really distracting. Well, spending time with friends and family isn’t necessarily a bad thing. But if there are other things which are genuinely important to you, but you’re being prevented from progressing your mission because you’re preoccupied by someone or something else, then we need to think differently. Not only is it bad for you because you don’t get to work on your thing now, but it’s also a bad
Thing for the person you’re sacrificing your mission for because you won’t even really be there with them. Because the only thing you’ll really be thinking about is the thing that you’re currently missing out on doing. I’m not saying to quit your job or drop your family members because they’re dead weight. But I am saying you need to learn to say no. Not all the time, but when it matters. Maybe you don’t have to hang out with
Your family every single free hour of the day, you know? Or go out with your friends every time they ask. Just say no sometimes because in the end, both you and the other person will be better off. When you’re at work, then just be at work and don’t try to focus on anything else. When you’re with family, just be with them in the moment. When you’re with your girlfriend, just focus on her absolutely. There’s no need to think
About anything else right now. And when it’s time to finally get what you’ve been planning to do all day, then it’s time to get to business. You might need to do what I did and sort of rearrange your day so that as soon as you wake up, it’s your time and you just get all your work done. And then once you finish your work, then you can give the rest of your day away as you see fit. But if you have
Something important to you, then you should make time for it. And not only that, but don’t overwhelm yourself with too many goals. Give all your effort to the one or two things that are most important to you and dedicate time for them. Stop trying to level up every single possible aspect of your life. Be more like Dark Souls. Focus on strength now, then maybe pyromancy later. Once you’ve completed upgrading your strength, now you can move on to doing
Other things like magic and stuff. But it’s best to just focus on one thing at a time if you really want to make the best progress. Pick your build, stop leveling everything, and focus on what actually matters. Live life on default settings. That’s all I have to say for today, guys. If you like Dark Souls and self-improvement, I have a new free community that you can join. It’s just going to be linked in the description. I
Also have a new course in that community. It’s called how to genuinely fix your life explained with Dark Souls. So, if that sounds interesting to you, there’ll be a second link in the description for that, too. No pressure for either of them, but just they’re there if you want to check them out, all right? You take care, guys. Don’t you dare go hollow.