One day I figured something out, and then I walked outside and the world felt different.
Not because the world had changed. Because the way I looked at it had.
This is the last article of Part II. The previous three covered sovereignty, the battlefield, and method — all of them “how to do it.” This one steps back to the more fundamental thing: how you see the world.
1. The glasses I used to wear
Before that day, I looked at the world in roughly two ways.
One was an arena: limited resources, limited slots, everyone an opponent. Colleagues were competitors, peers were threats, and someone else’s success was my loss. Winning brought anxiety; losing brought despair.
The other was a testing ground: every corner held an exam question, every step could be answered wrong, and a wrong answer carried a price. A sentence from a manager had to be mulled over repeatedly; a glance from a colleague had to be decoded. Careful. Treading on thin ice.
These two views share one property: they both leave you tense.
And they share one hidden assumption — that other people are coming for you.
2. A different view
What if it’s seen differently?
The world is not an arena, and not a testing ground. The world is an open world.
In this open world, the goal is something you choose and define yourself. There is no pre-set main quest.
Nature is scenery and set dressing — wind is a particle effect, sunlight is lighting, a traffic jam is this level’s timed challenge.
Other people are characters and players in this world. Each has their own character build, skill tree, and behavioral pattern.
And setbacks are level design. Failure is not the end; it is a signal: this approach is wrong — change position and try again.
This shift doesn’t solve a single concrete problem. But it dissolves a large amount of internal friction in one stroke.
Because the root of that friction is usually “what gives them the right to treat me like that.” And from this view, that question is malformed to begin with.
3. In a game, nobody tries to change anyone else
This is the point that took me longest to really absorb.
Suppose you meet a big, burly warrior in a game, charging headlong through everything. Would you run up and tell them to stop being so reckless and learn to flank?
No. You’d think: oh, that’s a warrior — high HP, high attack, and the way to play that class is to charge straight in. I’m a squishy mage, so I shouldn’t stand in front of them blocking the path; I’ll stay back and deal damage.
You wouldn’t try to change them, because you know that’s simply their build.
But back in reality, we do the opposite every day.
A colleague speaks bluntly; you decide their emotional intelligence is low and want them to change. A manager manages every detail; you decide they don’t trust people and want them to change. A client keeps revising requirements; you decide they haven’t thought it through and want them to change.
But what makes you think you can?
A person’s behavioral patterns and habits of thought are decades of leveling, hardened into place — the equivalent of a character’s base stats and skill tree. You’re a player passing through. What gives you the right to make someone respec their talent points with a few sentences?
Besides, when they hit a setback, that’s the plot on their own quest line — they’ll work out how to clear it themselves. If you run over, grab their controller, and say “you’re doing it wrong, let me show you,” that accomplishes nothing but annoyance.
Unless they come and ask: “How do you beat this? Do you have experience with it?” Then sharing is timely.
Trying to change other people is high input, low return, high friction. Understanding and adapting to them is low input, high return, low friction.
Which to choose needs no thought.
4. If you can beat it, fight it; if you can’t, go around
There’s a plain strategy in games: you don’t grind against every monster.
Meeting an elite, you assess first: with my current gear and execution, can I beat it? If yes, fight. If no, go level up somewhere else and come back for it. If it really won’t work, go around — there’s more than one path.
In reality, many people don’t do this. They meet a monster they can’t beat and keep ramming it until their morale collapses, then attribute it to “I’m just not good enough” or “the world is unfair.”
Switching to the game mindset unties a lot of knots automatically:
Meet a difficult colleague — assess: is this conflict worth the energy? Or should I collaborate differently, or simply reduce the overlap?
Meet a thorny project — assess: with my current resources and ability, can I take this down? Who do I need help from? Or should I set it aside for now?
Meet unfair treatment — assess: do I fight it head-on, or quietly build up my strength and then change environments?
This is not avoidance. It is strategic choice.
Good players all know that knowing when to fight, when to go around, and when to retreat is the real skill.
5. A game has a designer’s goals. Life doesn’t.
One difference has to be made clear here. A game and a life are not the same.
In a game you don’t worry about the goal — the designer already set it. You only work out how to play.
But this game of life has no pre-set main quest. What your goal is, nobody will tell you.
You have to go find it.
And the way to find it happens to be exactly what the previous article described:
Observe — see clearly where you are, what resources and obstacles are around you, what gear and what weaknesses you have.
Assess — on the basis of observation, judge which goals are feasible and which deserve long-term investment.
Choose — pick a direction and start moving.
Correct — keep observing feedback along the way and adjust the route at any time.
You are not playing a game someone else designed. You are designing your own.
That is harder than any game someone else designed, and more interesting — because every choice along the way is yours.
6. It also works as a ruler
This view has one extra use: you can measure people with it.
To see how someone is doing in this game, just look at where they spend their energy:
Do they spend all day criticizing others, dispensing judgments, trying to change everyone?
Or do they focus on leveling up their own character and gear?
Or do they understand that every character has their own build, and put their energy into observation, learning, and strategic response?
The first kind usually believes they are the game designer, when in fact they haven’t figured out their own character yet.
The third kind is composed, has clear boundaries, and can work with all sorts.
Use this ruler on the people around you and a lot of things become obvious:
That colleague who is always picking holes in the group chat — no need to weigh their evaluations heavily.
That person who keeps trying to “correct” you — they haven’t understood the rules of this game yet.
That person who can work with anyone — worth watching to see how they do it.
The interesting part is that when you measure others with this ruler, you are measuring yourself too: where does what I said and did today fall?
That in itself is a continuous self-calibration.
7. What it suggests for children’s education
Think one step further: can this thing be passed on to a child.
It can. But not by telling them.
Children are rarely persuaded by arguments; they are shaped by what they see. Explain “open world” to a child and the words mean nothing; but how you handle a level you can’t beat, they take in completely, and then do the same. So the entry point is not a curriculum. It is demonstration.
Why is it worth doing?
Most of the education we give children teaches answers — the standard answer, the correct solution, following the steps. These are all useful, but they share a premise: the question has already been defined by someone else.
What this way of thinking teaches is the other end: how to define the question yourself, and how to keep moving when nobody will tell you whether you’re right. That is the layer underneath all specific knowledge, and it outlasts any single subject.
There is one more layer: children already speak this language. They understand the world through pretending, by instinct — a leaf can be a pot, a stone can be a car. Talking to a child in the language of games is not humoring them; it is following how their mind already works. We lost that language as we grew up, and now we have to pick it back up.
As for method, roughly these.
Teach observation first; don’t rush to a conclusion. When they describe something, don’t evaluate it yet — let them finish the process. And then what? What were you thinking at that point? What they learn is to reconstruct an event, rather than stopping at “he was wrong.”
Use what they already understand as the analogy. The differences between people, the shape of difficulty, the meaning of rules — all of it can be explained with scenes they already know. The ladder has to be placed where they are already standing, not in a vocabulary they have never heard.
Don’t make the judgment for them. When they criticize someone, don’t say “you’re wrong” — show them that there is another way to play it.
Don’t rush them. This is not a subject you can cram. It grows slowly. The more impatient you are, the less it grows.
All of it rests on one precondition: I have to live this way first.
What I am teaching them is not a subject. It is the underlying operating system they will use for the rest of their life.
8. Have fun
This game has no ending screen.
But it has one advantage: every day brings new side quests.
You are not passively enduring life. You are actively exploring this open world. All you need to do is observe, choose, act, correct — and enjoy the process.
This world is your playground.
Have fun.
This is the fourth article of The AI Thought Quartet, Part II: Sovereignty and Practice, and the close of the whole part. The Sovereignty half was about who owns the thinking process; the Practice half is about what to do with it. And the foundation under both is the same single action — observation.