Levelling Up in Life
I’ve been stuck thinking about the notion of levelling up in life recently. I’ve gone searching as ever on Youtube and Podcasts for some kind of reinforcement to my fragmented thoughts, to hear someone else eloquently explain what I’m trying to get at…but alas I’m yet to find it.
What I have found however is a bunch of junk nonsense that I personally didn’t find particularly helpful, so I hit the keyboard running to type this out in an effort to formulate my ideas and provide a more cohesive explanation on what I think levelling up means.
Level:
/ˈlɛv(ə)l/a position on a scale of amount, quantity, extent, or quality
To me levelling up is forged in the realm of ambition. To level up your employment, to level up your skills, to level up your health. It’s all routed in a desire to improve one or many aspects of yourself or your lifestyle. Now I’m yet to write a full blog on vision boards, but I’ve been doing them every May for 5 years now, and over that time I’ve definitely shifted from a more explicit representation of the life I aspire to, and towards a more imaginative one. Think more in line with a mood board than a shopping list of expensive things to buy. The point is I’ve found it much more useful to envision and ‘feel’ the life, person and surroundings I want to inhabit through images that speak to that. I see levelling up as a physical manifestation of this process.
For example I’m pretty obsessed with wealth, not riches, but wealth. If riches is new money, brightly coloured Lambo’s and head to toe designer clothes with obnoxious prints. Then wealth is refined and reserved, with an old money aesthetic that doesn’t want to derive too much attention. It’s this kind of definition of wealth that I aspire to. As such I think the way to level up in life if this is the final destination, would be to match my actions with the refinement, reservation and respect with that of the person I’m trying to become. But what blueprint do I follow? And If I create a blueprint, how do I know it’s correct?
The answer to this I believe, is taking that mood board and making it come to life. By which I mean physically visiting the places that speak to this imagined reality. In my example perhaps it’s visiting the country club or fine dining restaurant, attending a supercar meet or engaging in a business forum. The idea is to experience the dream as a reality in whatever capacity possible. I’m unlikely to be granted entry into a supercar meet with the Abarth, but I can stalk the events calendar and ‘serendipitously’ arrive at the same location.
Before we go any further, please don’t do any breaking and entering in an effort to level up.
You get the idea. Think along the lines of a life hack. Does the local country club offer tennis lessons to non-members that you could take advantage of? Then use that as a way to get your foot in the door and hopefully connect with the business men and women who are fully paid up members. Some may call this ‘fake it till you make it’ but I think it’s a little different to that. To explain how, I immediately thought of a friend of mine.
His family was 4x4 mad! They all owned Land Rovers and would go out into the Yorkshire Dales and hit up all the green lanes they could, cross axeling their way over boulders and tree stumps. So when my buddy first passed his driving test he couldn’t afford a Land Rover, instead having to settle with a Ford Fiesta, but do you know what he did with it? Fitted mud flaps and a CB radio then hit up all the lanes and 4x4 events he could! Eventually he was able to buy his first Land Rover and now owns several along with running adventure drives all over the country. The Fiesta then wasn’t so much about faking it, it was more about participating at whatever level you can until you level up to where you want to be.
I think it’s this story that really speaks to what levelling up means to me. It’s about having a vision and aligning your steps in that direction. Then with each foot forward, you get a little bit closer. Even if the final destination isn’t in sight, you aim true and keep going.
/Si
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