Questify Your Life Sierra: Episode One
On completing quests, finishing second year of law school, and dealing with anxiety.
The story thus far: week of April 30th- May 7th
Meet Sierra, an eccentric law student with a lot to document and share. Earlier this past week a helpful and wise Guide inspired her to document her journey publicly.
This last week, after months of work, play, and dismay, Sierra completed her main quest: Second Year of Law School. Early in the week, she completed the sub-quest Mediation Clinic Project. For this project she fetched information from various sources and combined that information with her lived experiences and the outcome was a presentation called "Neurodiversity in Mediation.” This sub-quest was achieved in a super effective fashion and thus, she unlocked an additional side-quest: An Opportunity to Speak to the Alternative Dispute Resolution Section for the Minnesota State Bar Association.
Then she began the final sub-quest for the Second Year of Law School. After spending days studying and compiling information, Sierra beat the boss battle of Tax Law Final Exam, though she did not get out of that battle unharmed. Her victory, lead to the achievement of 5 reward points and a level up to level four!
Yet, even with so much achievement, the potential of burnout lingered. By giving too much of her time and energy into responsibilities in student organizations, work, and school, Sierra gave too much of herself and she finally learned an important lesson, (for now) one that many wise people had reminded her of.
She had to pivot.
Overworking herself to feel needed and be seen as capable would only work temporarily and comes at too high of a cost. But what does she pivot to? New main quest unlocked: Rest and reorganize.
While challenging the boss battles in the Second Year of Law School, Sierra's life balance was thrown to the side. It's time to regenerate and find inspiration again for other parts of her journey.
Completed Main Quest: Second Year of Law School
This list displays only the classes and law school extracurriculars I completed during my second year of law school. It does not include the many personal quests, dragon quests, dice games, or miscellaneous side-quests that I have completed during the course of completing Second Year of Law School.
Year Long
Community Mediation Clinic
Civil Rights/ Civil Liberties Moot Court
Law Council (Student Government)
Student Director of Student Food Shelf and Lounge
Costume Director of the Law School Musical
Member of the Well-Being Initiative
First Semester
Wills and Trusts
Constitutional Law: 14th Amendment
Law, Biomedicine, & Bioethics
Second Semester
Taxation 1
Trial Practice
Practical Estate Planning
Independent Filed Placement: Working as a Law Clerk at my favorite law firm
Acting in the Law School Musical (TORTanic)
The Questify Your Life System
I use gamification techniques and positive psychology research to make life more fun and doable. After years of doing this, I created a multi-tiered system where I create quests in my life to focus on the goals I value. The goal of this is to encourage goal completion in a form that is fun, with an emphasis on the importance of play and creativity.
This system is roughly split up into three parts, which I will go over very briefly below:
Journey
Life is about the journey, not the destination. This system is built to reflect that.
The journey incorporates principles like “change is inevitable” and “failure is a part of the process",” among many others.
The journey also includes physical documentation and the day-to-day execution of quests. This includes my game board, reward system, and how to level up.
Character
Character focuses on who you are as you travel around this realm.
This includes, in no particular order:
Aesthetics: What you look like to the outside world.
Simple But Not Easy: There are some quests in life that are simple, but not easy. Like going to sleep at a regular time every evening, getting exercise regularly, meditating, etc.
Acceptance: There are some things that we just cannot change about ourselves. Working on self-compassion and self-acceptance are important quests.
Personas: A fun way to intentionally focus your energy and actions in a way to further your quests. For example, you may choose to be a “Hobbit” when cleaning or a “Bard” when performing.
Quests
How you spend your time. What type of goals do you want to achieve? What do you want to learn? Everything can be a quest.
I split my quests into a couple of main quests, with sub-quests within those main quests.
I also use a system that I call “Dragon Quests.” A Dragon is a social justice passion that you focus most of your energy on. If you choose one and find a community to help fight that dragon you will, hopefully, be able to successfully fend off the feeling of burnout related to the terrifying amount of social justice issues that plague the world. My Dragon Quests almost always revolve around disability topics.
There are also various forms of side-quests and dice games.
Creative Writing Practice Skill Quest:
Letters From Anxiety- Is this style too cheesy?
Dear Self,
Writing in the third person? Cheesy. This is an unusual format. Who would want to read this?
Do something smaller,
Anxiety
Dear Anxiety,
I understand that you are trying to protect yourself from potential bullying or shaming, that is a valid defense mechanism.
Yet, the fear we feel is not sufficient to not try. To be couragous, you must be vunerable. It is scary but we need to try. You are worthy of taking creative risks and taking up space.
With love,
Self Compassion
A quest for you, if you dare to accept it: What Do You Value? (Side Quest)
“A value is a way of being or believing that we hold most important. Living into our values means that we do more than profess our values, we practice them. We walk our talk - we are clear about what we believe and hold important, and we take care that our intentions, words, thoughts, and behaviors align with those beliefs.” ― Brené Brown, [Dare to Lead](https://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/62183586)
In the Questify System, it can be very helpful to define your values to help you make sure the quests you are focused on are what you truly want. Sometimes we find ourselves with many quests, but they do not align with our overarching values. If they do align, that is fantastic! But if not, we may want to reconsider which quests we have pinned in our lives.
Objectives
Find a values list. Brené Brown has a fantastic list at https://brenebrown.com/resources/dare-to-lead-list-of-values/](https://brenebrown.com/resources/dare-to-lead-list-of-values/
Print out the List of Values
Circle the ones that you are drawn to
Put together similar terms in “buckets”- like “achievement”, “ambition” and “growth” in one bucket and “knowledge, curiosity, and competence in another.”
Choose which 2 or 3 feel right.
These can be used to help you determine whether or not a quest will benefit you in the long run! Values are fluid. The language you use for these concepts will likely change as you evolve throughout your life- the more important part is to look at the concepts that the language is trying to capture.
Mine are: Courage, Contribution, and Curiosity
Happy questing!
Remember to subscribe!