The central message of my story’s concept is based upon the exploration that essentially: “everyone is going through their own s**t”. I think that this basic understanding is crucial for people to effectively cultivate compassion and empathy for others. I was inspired by Tibetan Buddhist philosophy and more specifically the tenets of the Four Noble Truth’s.
If anyone is interested about the details of the Four Noble Truth’s I implore you to take a look here: Four Noble Truths – World History Encyclopedia
So for my story, I thought it was important to not only illustrate the message to the reader but also to equip them with some real tools to implement into their own lives.
One seminal idea that Tibetan Buddhism did a great job conceptualizing is mindfulness. I’m sure we’ve all heard that buzzword be thrown around as a marketing ploy selling meditation apps making big claims. However, the effectiveness of meditation has been scientifically proven to have innumerable benefits on our mental and physical wellbeing. Another facet of mindfulness is rooted in emotional intelligence (EI). Unfortunately, I don’t think it’s emphasized enough as a legitimate asset and therefore undervalued and neglected in our education system.
During the pandemic, I took it upon myself to “improve my mental health”, which was a bigger goal than I initially assumed. A lot of these ideas were familiar to me through the spiritual teachings of the Dalai Lama and his mission to promote the cultivation of humanist values. One of his most famous quotes succinctly summarizes the essence of his philosophy:
“If you want others to be happy, practice compassion. If you want to be happy, practice compassion.” — Dalai Lama
However, as a (recovering) cynic, I wanted to be shown real peer-reviewed evidence to convince me that x, y, and z, was going to give me actual results before I wasted my time to a hopeless endeavor.
That’s when I came across Marc Brackett’s, Ph.D research at Yale University that focuses on the study of emotions and how they affect us, the measurement of EI, and the pedagogy of EI in both schools and the workplace (Team | MOOD METER APP, n.d.). He alongside, psychoanalyst, Robin Stern, Ph.D. developed an evidence based approach to social and emotion learning coined RULER (recognizing, understanding, labeling, expressing, and regulating emotion) (Team | MOOD METER APP, n.d.). They used their research to develop a system called the Mood Meter that helps increase EI by teaching people to identify their emotions to better understand how emotions affect actions. The Mood Meter is a continuum of emotions that is divided into four equal quadrants and assigned a colour corresponding to a set of moods:
Which is when I had the idea of incorporating the framework of the Mood Meter into my interactive story to give the player the opportunity to identify the emotions of the protagonist within the given narrative as an EI building exercise. One big challenge is that mindfulness and emotional literacy isn’t ‘won’ in the span of an interactive story, and requires habit building. So I hope that my message is still delivered effectively given the limitations with the scope of the project. Also, I’m going to put in as much valuable info into the game opening page to give the player some context. As well as a comprehensive end credits page so credit can be given to the research of Marc Brackett and Robin Stern, and be a resource for the player to explore further on their own.
References
Team | MOOD METER APP. (n.d.). Retrieved August 2, 2022, from https://moodmeterapp.com/team/
Science | MOOD METER APP. (n.d.). Retrieved August 2, 2022, from https://moodmeterapp.com/science/
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