***
On October 8, 2025, I made the following entry in my journal:
“I really love this notebook and the possibility to write in this diary.
“I had some brief disconcerting thoughts, but quickly found what I wanted to do next.
“Simply having this space here for whatever thoughts might come is nothing short of fantastic and magical.
“Definitely reassuring.”
As I read it today, I realized that the fact that I wrote this entry in four separate lines was not a coincidence. It sounds like a recording of a conversation. Each line has a slightly different voice to it, even if this group in my head seems to agree about what they are discussing. This journal entry looks like minutes or notes of a meeting that took place in my head. Or we could also say a role-playing game (RGP) round.
Looking a little deeper into tabletop RPGs (TTRPGs) and learning from them was an enormous epiphany for me. It goes closely after being aware that anything in life can be considered a game, which we (co)design, (co)develop, and (co)play. That is probably why I called this epiphany Secret 2 in my book, Be Your Best Game Master: 12 Secrets to Happy, Successful, and Kind Self-Growth.
Here it is:
Secret 2: There is at least one endless role-playing game taking place in your head. Seeing, recognizing, and playing it, as well as any others, will empower you.
I came up with the idea of thinking of my emotions and thought processes as role-playing games myself. And it came as a flow of questions. Could it be that way? Could there be parallels between this hugely popular game genre and what happens in our heads? Could we learn from the masters of TTRPGs and tap into their wisdom to help us master the conflicting emotions and confusing thoughts?
Reading and researching gave a resounding “Yes.” Just see the following two quotes I found early in that research and shared as epigraph to my book Be Your Best Game Master:
“A roleplaying game is a conversation.”
— Justin Alexander, So You Want To Be A Game Master
“Self is not a monologue, constructed by our mind in isolation, but the product of an ongoing conversation; it is dialogic, born of our interactions with significant (and less significant) others.”
— a summary of The Self Illusion by Bruce Hood
Isn’t this realization inspiring? We often blame ourselves for confusing thoughts or emotions washing over us. We ask ourselves, “Why am I that way? Why can’t I or my life be different, like that other person and their life?” We blame ourselves for perceived failures and fear that our successes will turn out to be “fake news.”
The wisdom of TTRPGs says that none of its players, not even the game master, is responsible for how the story of this game turns out. All players tell the story together. The game master might have a prompt to start the story, and also have an eye on the rules of the game published by its developers, as well as the twists, maps, and tools the game master prepared before the game round, but how the story goes, all players can find out only together.
So, imagining your mind and your emotional self as a group of players responding to life can be enormously helpful. Because then you would be compelled to discover who is saying what inside you.
Here is what I have written in one of the final chapters of Be Your Best Game Master:
To navigate the unexpected challenges of life, remember that you are not alone; you are a group of talented individuals, and each of them can contribute to your team’s well-being and success. And you can all have fun living your life together.
***
If you as many others want to learn how to explore themselves kindly and successfully and how to reveal to the world around them and to themselves the best of the best they have inside them, then let Be Your Best Game Master be your trustful companion showing you how you can live in an exciting and rewarding discovery mode of your emotions, feelings, thought processes, and experiences.
Read this book and uncover the collective power of various aspects of yourself, as if they were players in very special role-playing games, your mind’s and life’s RPGs, and keep on winning these collaborative games.
