Level 1: Join us on a Quest!
Do an empowerment cycle with a team of Quest Guides. Go on a quest—find a service project that is fun and beneficial to the world, that is feasible for you to do but will push you to grow—a project that is you-shaped.
Choose a feasible project that is fun for you over an ambitious project that is of service to the world. Let go of patterns of coercion, or any expectations that were externally or internally imposed. Re-establish self-trust, rediscover that what is fun is also of benefit.
Introspection Side Quest
Develop a journaling habit (in feeds or otherwise). Regularly reflect on what you’re learning from your projects and your life. Feed what you’re learning into your process. Let it help you decide what projects to work on, and how you work on them.
Values and Vows Side Quest
Learn what values and vows are. Articulate your current understanding of your highest values. Articulate your current understanding of your vow, knowing that your vow is not an intellectual concept—for it is your very life—but that it can be helpful to have a compelling story to tell yourself or others about how you understand yourself. Make choices based on your newfound self-understanding—shifting towards projects and a life that reflects your values and your vow.
Productivity Side Quest
Install a task manager, notes app, read-it-later app, and calendar. Achieve Inbox Zero. Establish weekly review habits. Master digital fluency, task management, and personal knowledge management. Level up your own capacity as an individual actor.
Web Presence Side Quest
Let the internet be your playground, and discover how you want to play—and who you want to play with. Create a Twitter account, an email newsletter, and web site. Learn reply game. Experiment with how you want to share yourself with the world: what story you want to tell about yourself, what gifts you want to give the world, and what projects you want to invite others into.
Level 2: Choose Your Own Quest!
Reflect on your first service project. Consider what you learned, how you grew, and what you are called to do afterwards, either by the consequences your project had in the world, or by your own internal pulls and longings in the subsequent days, weeks, and months after you complete your project.
Take the momentum from your first project and craft a quest, a service project of your own design. Again, find a service project that is fun and beneficial to the world, that is feasible for you to do but will push you to grow—a project that is you-shaped.
Without losing the qualities of fun or feasibility, choose a project that is ambitious in scope and impactful in its benefit to the world—one that will demand you to grow in skill and capacity. Allow yourself to push your comfort zone to a degree that feels exciting and interesting, but not overwhelming. Notice that growth is its own reward, that beneficial impact and the compassionate desire to serve the world fuel their own motivation.
Choose Your Own Side Quests!
If your intuition calls you to explore new territories, learn new skills, or try new experiments, trust your intuition. Read that book, attend that class, do that online course, travel to that place—trust yourself, trust the world. Go down the roads you are called to explore, even if you don’t yet know or understand how what you are encountering fits into the larger picture of your life.
Level 3: Go on a Quest with another Hero!
Having seen how magnificently fun and rewardingly beneficial a service project can be, you have begun to look to the stars, to the scope of what quests you could embark on, the heights of what you could possibly achieve—and, by necessity, to the limitations of what you can do alone.
Consider a more ambitious project that you would enjoy working on—one that is even bigger in impact and ambition—one that will require you to work with other people.
Consider which roles you would need to complement your own—what set of skills would be necessary to complete this project, and which heroes you know who might have the relevant skills and experience. Consider what their motivations are and what might be exciting or compelling to them about this collaboration.
Pitch one hero (or potentially more) on collaborating with you. (Persuade! Seduce!) Be sure to pick a project that is fun and feasible for your team. Find a win-win collaboration structure. Let your collaborators shape the unfolding of the project—celebrate what you accomplish together, delight in the surprises you discover together.
Collaboration Dates Side Quest
Learn about collaboration. Attend gatherings, meet people and ask them to Zoom calls, and coffee dates. Ask people on collaboration dates—small to start (days/weeks), then medium and large projects (weeks/months). Build your skills in collaboration, your awareness of who you know and are connected to, and your understanding of those people (and, more generally, the psychology of others and how that impacts the dynamics of collaboration).
Strategy Side Quest
Familiarize yourself with well-established strategy concepts and tools. Begin to apply these strategic ideas and techniques to your own projects. Develop a sense of which tools are useful when. Level up your capacity for coordinating with other individuals and groups. Aim towards increasing service project throughput and maximum deep benefit.
Money Side Quest
Learn the basics of generosity, fundraising, commerce and business. Create a means for financial in-flow from your service projects. Reach the milestone of being able to reliably provide for your own financial needs. Expand that financial well-being and abundance to your team of collaborators and the networks you are connected to.
Level 4: Band Together!
Having accomplished one or more collaborative service projects with other heroes, look towards even larger projects in terms of the possibility for growth and the benefit the world receives, impact and ambition. What are structures that would empower you and other heroes to create fun service projects in an ongoing way?
Build or join a crew of heroes, working co-operative, guild, non-profit, or company. Clarify a vision and shared intentions for your team and the projects you’ll create together. Consider what values, structures, roles would help you to succeed.
Embark on projects under the heading of this new band of heroes. Look towards increasing service project throughput: how can you constantly, consistently be increasing the rate at which you complete service projects, the fun you have while doing them, and the positive, beneficial impact they are having in the world?
How can you structure your collective efforts towards maximum deep benefit: helping as many beings as possible, as deeply as possible?
End of Game: Enter the Heavenly Realm!
At the limit, a heavenly realm is a world where everyone is living in alignment with their vows. This is less a specific state or moment in time, and more of a direction that we approach. When you are living in alignment with your vow, you are happy—blessed and abundant, thriving and flourishing. You have a sense that you are safe and protected, that things happen as they need to help you move forward. You are in the exact perfect place that you need to be, doing exactly what you should be doing. You have everything you truly need, and are connected to all of the people you need to be connected to.
Of course, there are still problems or challenges, but you understand these to be learning opportunities, chances to grow internally, moments of possibility where the world might be benefitted more deeply.
As you live your vow, and more and more people around you are living their vow, the world benefits and celebrates, as it walks towards a heavenly realm for the benefit of all. Now, all there is to do is play and enjoy, to serve and to grow.
The Quest Map illustration was created by SĂlvia Bastos, and is licensed under a CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 license. You can support her work on Patreon.