Do I look as jet-lagged as I feel? Cheers to waking up at 3:30am and taking a three-hour nap at 2pm 🥂 Travel does funny things to the body. I definitely feel like I've been sippin' on children's benadryl, but I think I'm rounding the corner and getting on track. Hopefully 😅 Anyway- I love #Malta, and I love life. It's all worth it. . . . . . #girlsabroad #yogaeverydamnday #mindbodyspirit #theoutbound #liveinspired #openmyworld #agameoftones #colorsplash #islandliving #tasteintravel #higherself #findingyourfearless #theuniversehasyourback #superbetter (at Golden Bay Malta)
hey y’all. I just learned about this app today and I want to try it. this is an app made by a woman who had suffered from depression during her time recovering from a traumatic brain injury. she used a similar approach during her recovery that she implemented into this app. I’m planning on using this as a way to help me improve myself and I hope that people who are dealing with hard things and want help might try this.
SuperBetter: A Game for Improving Your Mental/Physical Health
SuperBetter is a game/app that helps you improve your health and heal from real-life challenges (depression, anxiety, chronic pain, lowering stress, losing weight, reaching goals and more) so you can move towards your “Epic Win”. It is really unlike any game I’ve ever played before.
This game is backed with loads of science. Your first mission: Watch this incredible TED Talk from the Game Developer
https://youtu.be/lfBpsV1Hwqs
It’s one of my favorites and has over 10 million views… WATCH IT!
Download the SuperBetter app and access your content online. https://www.superbetter.com We can be Allies and encourage each other to get SuperBetter!
💛 My Quests consist of things like identifying my strengths, give three genuine compliments, and smile at all the people you see today.
❤ My Power-Ups can be things like chug a glass of water, list 5 things I’m grateful for, jumping out of bed in the morning, and cuddling my stuffies.
💙 My “Bad Guys” range from procrastination and being too critical, to sleeping in and having negative thoughts.
Your Quests, Power-Ups, and Bad Guys may be completely different than mine! And that’s good. The game is designed to be very customizable, so let yourself be creative - yet honest. It’s meant to help you! I have loads of content on mine and loads more to offer my Allies.
How do we become Allies in the game? Send me a tumblr message and I’ll tell you!
On my journey to strengthening my willpower I encountered another quest I’d like to share. SuperBetter uses scientific findings to create small fun quests which help strengthen your mental resilience.
Science part: Cultivating curiosity helps us maintain an open mind and well-toned nervous system - aka we don’t overreact when confronted with normal problems and hindrances.
Quest part: Look around the room right now and find three interesting, intriguing or beautiful things about your environment that you’ve never noticed.
My bathroom isn’t exactly the most.. fascinating place, in fact it’s really dusty and grimy right now, which made it hard to find anything beautiful. It’s also a room with comparatively few changes. Nevertheless, I found a few intriguing things (after staring at minor details for like 15 minutes like a lunatic).
The Shaver Rocket
I’m not sure what this part is for, but the colour and luminescence looks really pretty, and it reminded me of a rocket. Not seeing it? Well, here is the proof!
(I wouldn’t blame you if you’re still not seeing it, to be honest)
The Subnautic Water Meter
I really like small gears, and while looking at my water meters I noticed those cute black gears, and the fact that these instruments could totally be found in the engine of a submarine. I mean, look at them! They’re cool as heck!
The face in the wall
It took some time and intense staring at my wall tiles, but I found a face! The lightening isn’t great in that picture, so I took the liberty to demonstrate:
He looks kinda dumb, but also cute. I’ll call him Wallaby from now on.
And those were my awesome findings! I’m not sure if my mental resilience rose, of if I’ll react more calmly to annoyances from now on, but it sure as heck was fun and creative and boosted my mood. Try it out right now, you’ll see what I mean!
Last quest of the day (my daily goal is to complete 3 quests) is to be a Smarty Pants.
In order to be a Smarty Pants, I looked up an interesting fact about preparedness. My countries government suggests to plan 2 liters per day per person, and to keep an emergency supply for 10 days at home. Since my household consists of two people, we should stockpile 40l of Water.
Buuut I would prefer to have enough for at least two weeks, if not even three, which means I'll need something between 56l and 84l.
I'll have to remember that for later, as my first food supply goal.
My next quest is to choose a motto. I already have a motto that helped me through some tough times, especially situations were my procrastination habits got out of control and I found myself drowning in undoable deadlines and months old, still untouched To Do lists.
Start were you are.
Use what you have.
Do what you can.
It's no use to fret over my past failures. It won't resolve my current issues. Instead, I remind myself to focus on the moment, and the problems I'm actually able to fix.
I think it's a good motto for prepping, too. In emergency circumstances I'll have to work with only the things I've prepared beforehand, and those given to me by the environment. Thinking about the What if's won't help me then.
My first SuperBetter quest is to imagine a habit or a thought process that I would like to rewire through practice, and journal about that.
Lying in bed or sitting on the couch I'm often unmotivated to stand up and do the things I have to do, or even really want to do. Pretty normal, right? But then my brain starts telling me that I really can't stand up, and that I won't be able to until I get motivated otherwise. Shouldn't me wanting to do something be enough?
And, at this point in my life, I learned to just give up. I start watching videos, or reading comics, or browsing the world wide web, without even thinking about fighting the impulse anymore. My brain thinks I'm not able to stand up? Well, I guess I'm gonna waste the next 5 hours watching stuff I'm not interested in.
And after I succumbed to this irrational thought, wasting many hours while actively being bored, I start hating myself for being inactive for so long.
If I could rewire my brain, I would like to banish the thoughts: You can't stand up! or You can't change your current state of being!
My first step to preparing for everyday life is to sign up at SuperBetter. It's a website created by Jane McGonigal, a psychologist and game designer, who created a gaming framework to improve her mental health while being bedridden for months because of a concussion.
Preparedness comes with a certain mindset for me. I want to take control of my life instead of floating passively and just reacting to things happening, as I have done until now. I can't prepare for everything, that would be really time and money consuming, and it's just impossible to be prepared for every single possibility. Instead, I want to prepare myself to be flexible. I want to be able to trust my future self to handle any situation that life throws at me as good possible.
Therefore, I start with my mental capabilities.
My goal is to up my willpower, because willpower one of my weak points, and I'm gonna need it to keep my efforts going. I hope that the SuperBetter Method will help me with that.
