The majority of my teen-era I wasted. I shut my creative mind off and became less social and I started playing video games more and more. I finally got tired of feeling robotic and isolated and decided to start making changes in my life. I decided what I wanted to be passionate about, improving my ability to speak, think and be creative, joined local groups to start socializing more as well as advancing my passions, and began living consciously and fully aware.

Over night I had a paradigm shift in my mindset and over the course of a few months the quality and richness of my life improved in leaps and bounds. And this change didn’t cost much money or time. Now as I reflect on the past I really see how much time I wasted away — but I refuse to see it as a loss. The time wasn’t all bad and anti-social and the experiences I had have lad me to a conscious lifestyle. I know where I don’t want to be and can move away from apathy and into passion. I truly believe this decision means that life gets better and better every day. I choose to be happy and content yet still remain driven towards my goals and passions.

Since I’ve made this shift, I’ve given several talks about the subject of passions and goal setting to local groups in Austin, I’ve had several people come to me to help them make a shift in their quality of life, and seen many people become more passionate about life in general… and it feels great! I love helping people enjoy a more full, rich, passionate life — So I’ve decided to start a new company doing just that!

I am still ironing out some details but I’ll make a post about this new business soon.

In Anatomy of a Quest – part 1: Objectives we talked about the 3 guidelines of  a quality goal, how to set them, and also how Blizzard uses these goals to keep players playing World of Warcraft.

So now that we have the Guide Lines for Setting a Quality goal, lets get to the best part of the achievement process: The Rewards! These are your reasons for accepting the quests in the first place… because let’s face it – without some kind of reward, getting covered in boar’s blood isn’t very appealing (to me anyway).

The Need To Improve

Rewards vary from quest to quest and typically the more risk, the greater the reward, this is usually true IRL as well! Say you want to gain money IRL, the safer the investment is, the less reward gained. Sure a Certificate of Deposit is safe, but 3% interest rate hardly keeps up with inflation much less creates a profit. The quests in game that reward you with epic or legendary items tend to require more time, effort, gold and risk than a quest that rewards with uncommon items. Killing 12 boars isn’t as risky as bringing Onyxia’s head to Orgrimmar so the reward shouldn’t be as great!

The first thing I do is open my quest log, compare the quest rewards to what I have already and see if the reward is an upgrade for me. If it isn’t the chances of me doing that quest are greatly diminished. Why achieve a goal that doesn’t move me in a positive direction?

Need Motivation?

Look no further than the rewards! Compare the reward to what you currently have and if it’s significant enough you will find that motivation becomes an easier task than before. Any time you feel unmotivated to do something, ask yourself three things:

1. What is the reward I want to achieve?
2. What will I gain from achieving this?
3. How will this improve my character?

If your answers to these questions don’t compel you to action, either your goal isn’t worth doing or you are using the wrong reasons. In order for these questions to spark a burning desire to achieve there must be emotion behind your reasons, not just sound logical decisions. Once emotion enters the equation an interesting thing happens – it’s no longer working towards your goals, its achieving them!

Feeling Great

When you finally complete all the objectives in a quest, turning the quest in and receiving the rewards is… well, rewarding! Achievement breeds an incredible feeling of accomplishment, self esteem and helps to develop your power for making decision and accomplishing more! The truly amazing thing about quests IRL is that the rewards continue! Each time you work out for instance, you increase your stats, the next time you accomplish a goal you don’t lose the previous stats to get new ones, its cumulative!

What are some rewards that motivate you?

In the next of this mini-series we will cover following through with the quest!

<< Anatomy of a Quest – Part 1: Objectives

In his latest blog post, Steve Pavlina talks about the personal and financial devlopment lessons he has learned IRL and compares them with the MMORPG world. The post is well written and contains some paradigm-shifting concepts for developing financial wealth that Steve is famous for.

Check out the post entitled: Your Wealthy Avatar (stevepavlina.com)

For those of you who don’t know who Steve Pavlina is… He has a unique understanding on the whole field of personal development that I find refreshing. He has been one of my biggest inspirations for blogging and for personal development! Definitely check out his site!