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Embracing fear and failure

Failure and fear are close relations. To put it broadly, we fail when our expectations don’t match an outcome. We remember this often negative experience and can become fearful when we perceive a chance of failure in the future. When we’re fearful we’re less likely to perform at our best, making us more likely to fail. Rinse and repeat. Our biology also contributes to feelings of fear. The Amygdala , part of our brain stem, is a primitive component of our brain responsible for communicating basic needs. It sends two types of failure-focused alerts: “we are in need of something”keep readingEmbracing fear and failure

Construct a solid vision to boost your impact

We all have good ideas, but people who create lasting change dedicate themselves to ideas with impact. Impact means change beyond our immediate environment. We can’t know exactly how much impact our ideas will have, but there are ways to ensure we’re starting off on the right foot. For starters, we can establish goals to keep our project on track. It’s deceptively simple, but taking the time to develop practical and precise goals and pausing regularly to consider how we’re addressing them makes a huge difference in our potential for impact. What’s the problem? To begin, we need to focus on thekeep readingConstruct a solid vision to boost your impact

Reflecting on failure at games for change

I revel in failure. The size of a failure correlates with the size of the the opportunity it offers. Failure is how we learn. It helps us evolve and grow as individuals and as a society, which is why I was surprised to see  a very public aversion to failure at the Games for Change Festival last week. The festival attendees were roughly split between designers and educators, and everyone had come together to discuss the development of interactive experiences that enact real change. During one session, a teacher admonished game designers for producing what I, too, consider the scourgekeep readingReflecting on failure at games for change