When I was in high school, I spent a ton of time playing Medal Gear Solid for the original PlayStation. The action-adventure stealth video game followed Solid Snake, a soldier whose mission was to stop a terrorist threat by infiltrating a nuclear weapons facility. The goal of the game was to liberate two hostages, defeat the terrorist bosses and stop the impending nuclear strike.
Basically, the game was foreshadowing to a plot from a season of 24 and Solid Snake was the original Jack Bauer.
The game has to be one of my favorite video games of all time, but I did not always enjoy playing it. In fact, there was one point in the game that I almost quit and put the game away forever.
In one level near the end of the game, you have to defeat a former FBI agent named Psycho Mantis. The story goes that Mantis used to be a good guy, but during one interrogation he dug a little too deeply into the mind of a serial killer and adopted the killer’s psychotic personality. Mantis becomes a psychic who has become disgusted with humanity.
As a psychic, Mantis is able to read Snake’s mind and avoid every attack. Somehow the game was designed so that Mantis could tell what button you were about to press on your controller and he would react perfectly and dodge every bullet.
I must have tried this level 50 times, each ending in those two words that every gamer dreads…Game Over. For the life of me, I couldn’t figure out how to beat this guy. How can you defeat someone who knows what move you are going to make before you even make it?
Luckily, I didn’t keep that question to myself.
In talking with a friend who also played Medal Gear Solid, I mentioned I was stuck at the Psycho Mantis level and just couldn’t beat it. “Want to know the secret to beating that level,” he asked. He went on to explain that the only way to overcome the psychic’s tricks was to plug a second controller into the PlayStation and use that controller in the battle against Mantis.
I don’t know how he knew this trick, but it worked! The second controlled rendered Mantis’ psychic power useless. Once I was using the alternate controller, it was actually pretty easy to defeat the boss.
There are a lot of times in life that we get stuck. We get frustrated and want to quit because something is preventing us from getting to that next level. We may not be confronted with a psychotic psychic, but it can feel like it.
Maybe we are treading water in a job that is going nowhere. Or maybe we are looking to get our business off the ground but something is holding us down and we just can’t figure out how to break loose.
Luckily for us, there are a lot of people who are willing to help.
If it wasn’t for my friend, I may still be trying to beat Medal Gear Solid. It would have taken days if not months for me to figure that out on my own.
Asking for help in our personal or professional lives can provide the same guidance. Friends and mentors probably have already encountered the level at which we are stuck. They can provide cheat codes to help us along our way.
“Want to know the secret to beating that level,” they might say.
All we have to do is ask.
Inspired by Do Over by John Acuff
Photo credit: Wikipedia
