23 Jan Your Strategy Guide for Life | 2025 Geeky New Year Refresh
In anticipation of my first Winter-een-mas celebration, I wanted to start this year with a post on life strategy guides.
I actually love game nights. As we get older and find that time is not actually on our side when it comes to doing all the things we want to do, it seems like game nights get lost in the shuffle. When hubs and I do get to play, it’s funny to observe the difference in our gameplay and how we approach board, card, and video games. Of course, it’s less funny when I lose.
Board Games
When it comes to board and card games, hubs loves using strategy to try and best me, and we often almost come to blows when we have game nights.
Okay, so perhaps I’ve exaggerated things a bit – we don’t actually physically fight. And, well, maybe the verbal fisticuffs are all me… but who’s keeping track?
Me? I skip into our game sessions with my naive “we’re-just-going-to-have-fun” expectations for my favorite games. But not him; Hubs comes prowling into our games like Batman on the hunt – strategies and contingencies already swirling around in his head as he plans my utterly humiliating defeat. Every. time.
I just want to put it out there so that we are all aware: I used to be really good at board games. In most board games during childhood family game nights, I went undefeated… until I met this man. Now I’m just the fodder for his strategic annihilations. My board game strategy abilities are weak because all I want to do is build my land and make my people rich while living happily ever after. I don’t want to fight in wars to destroy everything I’ve built up (I’m looking at you, SmallWorld).
Whew! Thank you for letting me get that off my chest… Let’s move on, shall we?
Video Games
As far as video games, well don’t even get me started. Hubs stops to check every corner and break every vessel, often getting sidetracked in new rooms and side quests as I watch impatiently for him to move the story along. I’m a task-oriented player who loves big maps to explore – with purpose. I tend to run from goal to goal, collecting what I need to survive along the way, and rarely getting caught up in quests that don’t relate to the story. So on this front, we are actually opposites.
I will admit that the only time I find myself fascinated with exploring and discovering new things is when I play Horizon (Zero Dawn & Forbidden West). I could get lost in that world all day.
A Guide to Strategy
So I was wandering around on Amazon, pricing that Aloy Funko Pop I just have to have. Spoiler alert – it is quite pricey! It was during these adventures that I stumbled onto the Horizon Forbidden West Official Strategy Guide and I knew that I needed it for my collection. I’ve actually already made it to the final boss in the game, but the images are gorgeous and the book would make a great statement piece on my Aloy shelf.
Yes. Yes I do.
Either way, I thought about strategy guides and why we have them. A guide for a game – I mean. If you think about how video games have come along in just the past few years, getting all of that information into one guide is quite a feat. And then I wondered about board games – they don’t change at all. And a few board games do have strategy guides for those who want to master the game.
Obviously, I should probably be reading more strategy guides so I can come out the victor in our next death (I mean) game match.
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What is a Strategy Guide?
A strategy guide is a video game instruction book that contains hints or complete solutions to specific video games. It is basically a breakdown of the game from beginning to end and all the things you need to know to successfully complete each task and chapter.
Speaking of strategy guides and life...
Well, we weren’t. But all of this got me thinking about life and how it’s kind of like a video game… Okay, hear me out. I’m not saying that life is a video game in the sense that we shouldn’t take it seriously, but I do think that many of the skills we use while playing video games can easily translate to real life. And if that’s the case, well, think about how complicated life gets. It would be much easier to navigate this life with a little help.
I first wrote this post two years ago (2023) when my blog was just a baby-blog, and it started as a ‘seven things I would tell my younger self’ post. But as I wrote it, I thought there would be more meaning to me and you if I wrote in terms of a game strategy. Why? Because I’m a geek, and, if you’re here, chances are you are too. Since then, I’ve started the process of gamifying my life goals in my bullet journal – an on-going year-long project that I would love to share with you if you’re interested. Let me know in the comment section and I’ll post updates and even create a printable for your own journals!
I will be celebrating my birthday soon, and when I look back on my life so far, I have to say that through the craziness and stress, I have mostly enjoyed it. Are there things I would change? Of course – don’t we all have things in our lives we wished had turned out differently? I think that more than wanting to change anything, there are just some things I wish I’d known back then that I learned later on in life. If I could just visit the past to give myself hints as to what not to do, I bet life would have been easier to navigate. I often wish my 20-year-old self had a strategy guide.
Maneuvering through the minutiae of life takes skill and strategy that is sometimes learned by simply living. I’ll take the good with the bad, but all in all, I wish I could tell my younger self that this is where we’d end up and that there was never anything wrong with us. We were perfectly fine and were always going to be okay. Only I wish I would have discovered this sooner - I think the last few years would have been easier on my mental health.
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A Strategy Guide for Your Geeked Out Life
I thought it would be fun to start here, at this point in our lives, and create a strategy guide. What would you want your younger (or future) self to know? What tips and tricks would you share to make the journey a bit easier? Are there monsters or other enemies you’d want to warn yourself about, and maybe drop some advice for defeating them?
Every strategy guide has a getting started, or introduction section that tells you about the game and how to use the guide. Let’s start there for this post. For part two of this post, I will create a printable for you if you prefer to complete the sections and put it in your planner or bullet journal to reference. If this is something you’d like to continue, let me know below or sign up to receive occasional additions to your own personal strategy guide. It’s never too late in the year to start your planning so take your time.
Now grab some tea and let’s get started on our 2025 Strategy Guide for Life, shall we?
Choose your difficulty level
Starting a new year means starting a new difficulty level. This is personal and completely up to you. There are five from which to choose ranging from the easiest to the most difficult: story, easy, normal, hard, or very hard. The difficulty level you choose will determine how challenging your quests will be. Your difficulty level setting for the year will also determine the difficulty of the challenges you’ll face throughout the year as well as the amount of damage you’ll incur, and the recovery time required before your next life challenge.
Honestly, this is all up to you and can be changed at any point during the year according to your goals, skills, and abilities. For example, you may learn skills that grant you new abilities that enable you to level up; which, in turn, will allow you to choose a higher difficulty level if you want more of a challenge.
Do you want to just play this year on story-level difficulty and avoid as many challenges as possible? You can try to just enjoy the ride and go with the flow. Or if you have a big goal to meet this year, you may want to choose a harder difficulty level that will require you to gain more abilities and face more challenges. Which will be most rewarding for you?
How will you store your save files, or memories?
If my games did not automatically save my progress, I would often log off and forget to do it myself. In fact, this has happened to me in one specific game many times; so when I go back in to play, I’ve often had to start over because I forgot to save.
I don’t want to talk about it. #traumatized
Each year of your life does not come with auto-save. This means that you will need to manually save your files as you go, using different tools and options that best fit your lifestyle (game). Photos and videos are the best ways to create save files so you can go back later and recall the moment. Our memories are the best way to live in the moment rather than on the screen, but when memory fails, pictures are worth a thousand words.
Your game is saved whenever you make amazing memories. Don’t live to work; instead, live your life to its fullest. Make good memories and save those times of joy and happiness to use when times aren’t so great. You will need those memory files to get you through.
LISTEN TO SOME AMAZING GAMING SOUNDTRACKS WHILE YOU READ...
Game Play Basics
Before coming up with a strategy, you should know the basic gameplay concepts for that game. Your younger self will be unprepared for the challenges ahead, so you want to have a basic knowledge of this game of life in advance:
TIMELINE
Say you were to create a timeline for yourself, right now, knowing what you’ve learned up to this point. What are the dates you would want to remember?
This is your timeline and your choices are yours. However, it is the only timeline you have – make good decisions and choose wisely. Follow your instincts. Don’t second-guess yourself. Mistakes are rarely life-threatening IRL, so learn from them and don’t repeat them. You only have one life IRL (in real life), so live it and live it to the fullest.
LEVELING UP
Whether you count this as birthdays or pivotal life events, leveling up happens naturally as you progress through life. I think life’s events should be celebrated; but even more so, I think we should use those times to look back and think about what we learned. Most of us do this at the end of the year before we make our New Years’ resolutions, and some of us do this when we have a birthday. Whenever we choose to acknowledge our next level is a good time to think about what we learned and the skills we acquired along the way.
Don’t rush it, don’t fight it. Use each year (level) to learn all the skills and gain all the abilities available to you so you’re prepared for the next level. Explore every inch of space you can while using your skills to make the most of this life. Keep a record of the skills you’ve learned and earned, and track what you still need to learn to get you where you want to be. Don’t forget your save files!
SKILL BUILDING
Speaking of skills, how will you tell your younger self to build up your skill-set. Would you advise college education? Training school? Life experience? How have you continued to learn today that could have helped your younger self? What are some lessons you wish you’d learned sooner? What are some skills you wish you could acquire?
In order to level up, you should build your skillset. This means that you never stop learning. Whether in a traditional sense or as you work your way through life, education is important and it comes in many forms. Don’t stay stagnant – take time to explore and learn from others. You can’t truly level up without having honed your skills and built up your mental reserves.
MENTOR
This specific title is a direct Final Fantasy xiv (14) reference, but I thought it was relevant to real life, as well. Throughout every course of your life, there are people placed around to help and guide you. Seek out mentors, teachers, and friends. Cherish your family. Allow them to share their knowledge and wisdom with you, as well as help you to create memories for game saves. Some people will follow you from level to level, but others are meant only to guide you for a time. That’s okay – nothing is forever in the game of life.
Do you have mentors or people you can rely on for help? On the flip side, how are you mentoring or helping others along their journeys?
EQUIPMENT
All the necessary items you need for a particular purpose may vary from level to level. As you learn and grow, you may need to upgrade your equipment to meet higher needs. And there are times you will have to drop equipment to make room for new items.
It isn’t always about the equipment, and not everyone levels up the same. But when you can, utilize the objects around you to make your life easier to navigate – give yourself an advantage when you can.
I would advise collecting, crafting, and modifying equipment that will help you through your time of learning and through your time working. But I would also advise looking for equipment that will help you relax and have fun, too. In this game of life, you will collect items that are necessary for survival. Life is not just school and work, so keep an eye out for items that can be used as hobbies. Hobbies make life fun and help you to relax, so stop sometimes and breathe; then pause life to fish if you want. Enjoy your days, don’t just get through them.
Think about your goals in life – either then or now. What equipment did you need to accomplish your goals? What can you upgrade, drop, or obtain to continue working towards your goal?
CRAFTING AND MODIFICATIONS
Mods, or modifications, are upgrades you can make to clothing and weapons as you progress through a game. In life, as you ‘level up’, you earn or obtain new ‘tools’ that enable you to keep moving towards your goals. These items can be ‘modded’ (modified) or improved upon so your skills don’t get stagnant, and so you’re always prepared for changes in your world.
To me, weapons don’t have to be only items you use to fight with – they can also be tools in your arsenal to give you a leg up as you make your way through life. What I’m referring to are your talents and skills, and honing – adding modifications – to them to help you accomplish your goals.
For example, writing is a skill and words can be a weapon that can be used to draw blood or as a tool to help heal wounds – it all depends on how you mod them. Craft your skills and hone your talents – then upgrade them at every opportunity to get the best use from them.
Think of one skill in your arsenal and how you can hone it. What do you need to do in order to modify their effects to best suit your goals?
CHOICES
The choices we make in life affect others around us and shape future events. Just like in most action-adventure games, people will remember how you responded to them and your choices can help or hinder your future endeavors.
My advice when making choices that involve other people is to always choose kindness and empathy. Every time. No matter how inconvenient it may seem at the time, it always comes back around in some way. But also be firm when necessary. Do no harm but take no shit is a perfect way to live, with an emphasis on that first part. Always be kind to animals and always care for nature. Remember to think about the effect you have on everything around you because we’re all connected in some way.
What is one choice you’ve made that you wish you could take back? Was it how you treated someone? Something you said? We can rarely take back our choices, but how can you take the lessons learned from past regret and apply them to your future self?
GAME PROGRESSION
This game of life moves on with or without you taking full advantage of every challenge, every task, and every level. I mean, I’m still trying to figure out where August-September of last year went while reconciling with my present self that it’s already the start of a new year! My advice is to live your life to its fullest and don’t allow self-doubt or negativity to hinder your growth. Your intuition will be your best guide – strengthen and use it every chance you get because there will be voices all around you telling you what they think you should do. Choose wisely and move forward with confidence. Unfortunately, this isn’t an actual video game, and in this IRL game, there are no do-overs. Try to live with no regrets.
Whew! That’s quite a bit for one post – and for our first post of the new year! Thank you for sticking with me until the end. I can’t wait to explore and continue this strategy guide concept in future posts. If you would like updates to your strategy guide and to be notified when a printable become available, sign up here to join the list and complete your strategy guide with us! Don’t worry, I’ll also have a list of definitions for you in the next post. 🙂
If you could jump into a video game, what kind of game would you want to be a part of? I’m really starting to love the idea of being in a fantasy action-adventure, like Final Fantasy. I want to, at all costs, avoid any apocalyptic games – too close to real life for me LOL. And don’t even get me started on how I’m waiting for my isekai!
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