How a computer nerd hacked the universe
So I went around to my friend’s house to talk about a development we were doing together.
We go into his home office – kind of a man-den. It was obvious that this was where he did his work and his whiskey drinking.
I’d been to their place to dinner a few times but I’d never been given access to the den. It felt like I should have learnt a secret handshake or something.
Anyway, after a while hanging out and looking over some designs I notice he’s got this little wooden sign on his desk.
It was an unusual thing. On the top part it had “Difficulty Setting:” embossed into the wood. Below that it had EASY, NORMAL and HARD. There was also this kind of pointer thing – like those score counters in pool.
It was set to EASY.
I point to it and ask him about it. He laughs and looks a little bashful. He knows what I get up to and says, “If I tell you it’s not going to end up in one of your blogs, is it?”
I’m like, “nah mate.”
Anyway, he says that he first came up with this thing about 10 years ago. He was going through a rough trot. Things weren’t flowing his way. He had no money in the bank, he was in debt, someone stole his car, and then his dad died.
Life had hit him with a sledge hammer.
He thought about throwing in the towel.
And he said he was joking to his friend one day that it felt like the difficulty level on his life had jumped up to HARD while he wasn’t looking.
I got what he was talking about, but I wonder if everyone does. He says he played a lot of computer games in his teenage years – kind of when they were first coming out. A lot of those games let you choose the difficulty setting.
Easy meant there weren’t many enemies about, and they were terrible shots. It was a walk in the park.
Difficult was when you got swarmed by bad guys and they were all crack shots.
Normal was kind of how the game makers intended it to be played.
He said that back when he was a teenager, and back when games were super expensive, he couldn’t buy a new game every time he’d finish one.
So he’d go through and ‘clock’ the game on the normal setting. After that, he’d go back and set the difficulty to HARD and clock it again.
So that’s what he meant. It felt like his life had been set to HARD and everything was getting the better of him.
“You should set your life to EASY,” his mate joked.
And so as a joke he went back and stuck a sign, scrawled on some paper, to his desk: Difficulty Setting: EASY.
He meant it as a joke but something happened.
Because he had that experience with computer games – when the EASY setting was often so easy it was comical – enemy robots would practically blow themselves up – his sign evoked a really strong feeling.
And that feeling was that things were easy. All challenges were a matter of course. It was all about fun. You had unlimited ammo and infinite lives. There was no doubt that you might lose.
And so every time he looked at that sign, it brought back that feeling. It’s fun. It’s easy. All the odds are stacked in my favour.
I’m sure people stick motivational posters to their walls – pictures of dolphins with “The cosmos wants you to succeed you gorgeous snowflake” written on it.
But for him. This is what worked. This is what spoke to him.
And after a while, it started to work. After a while, life did feel easy. His challenges weren’t as hard to get through. He received help from unlikely places. His enemies blew themselves up.
And after a few years, he’d become so impressed with it, that he got his friend to make him up the sign that is still on his desk.
He confided to me that it really felt like he had “hacked” the universe. That something happened when he wrote out that sign that sent a very clear signal to the universe – “I’d like life to be a bit easier please.”
And the universe was only too happy to agree.
(Note two of the keys to manifestation here: write it down, and focus on the feeling first.)
And he reckons that since then, life has just been one success after another.
Nice. I’ll have one of your top shelf whiskeys then, thanks.
I asked him if he ever thought about setting the difficulty to hard.
And he said, “You know what. Sometimes I do. It’s like the computer games. There’s the thrill of the challenge. It’s exciting to overcome incredible odds.
And I used to worry that I was making myself soft – by choosing the EASY setting I was missing opportunities for growth.
But I’ve decided that I’m happy with the difficulty setting on EASY. I’m just going to focus on progressing through more levels.
I mean, even on the easiest difficulty setting, the journey to Prime Minister of Australia would be incredibly difficult and challenging.
So I’m just going to let everything come easy. I’m just going to go deeper and further than I ever thought I could. That’s my plan.
And at the end of the day, it might just all be in my head, but I just enjoy life more this way.
I’m playing for fun.”
This was too good. I said he had to let me write about it.
Ok. Just don’t use my name.
No worries Garry.
Now, I’m not sure if he really did hack the universe, but I am sure that if you approach life like a walk in the park with unlimited ammo, you are putting yourself in a very powerful state of mind.
And that state of mind will get results.
Where’s your difficulty setting at?