I Never Asked If I Could Do It

Six Months

Today, a friend saw me playing Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice and asked me how long it took me to finish the game.

I told him about six months.

He looked surprised and told me that he had been playing it for about two years and still hadn't finished the game.

At that point, I was already on NG+8. I had finished the game multiple times, collected all the skins, and maxed out my vitality and health bar.

I didn't think much about it at first. To me, I had just been playing the game for a while.

But after that conversation, I started thinking about it a little differently.

I Never Thought It Was That Hard

Sekiro was actually the first AAA game I ever played, and it was also my first Soulslike game.

So when I started playing it, I didn't really have much experience to compare it to.

I knew the game was difficult. I died a lot, especially when I first started playing. But I never sat there thinking that maybe I wasn't good enough to finish it.

I just played.

When I died, I tried again. When I couldn't beat a boss, I learned how it attacked and tried again. Little by little, I got better without really thinking about how difficult the whole game was supposed to be.

I think that was the interesting part.

I wasn't trying to prove that I could beat one of the hardest games ever made. I was just trying to figure out how to beat the next thing in front of me.

Everyone Made It Look Easy

Even though Sekiro was my first Soulslike game, I wasn't completely alone while learning it.

Whenever I got stuck, I would go online. I watched people fight bosses, watched guides, and saw other players doing things that looked incredibly difficult.

But after seeing it again and again, something strange happened.

Things that were supposed to be difficult started to feel normal to me.

I would see someone beat a boss, learn the attack patterns, and make the whole fight look easy. Then I would think, if they can do it, I should be able to do it too.

I didn't really ask myself whether I was good enough.

I just assumed that if other people could figure it out, I could figure it out too.

So I kept playing, kept dying, and kept learning.

Eventually, something that looked impossible when I first started became something I could do without thinking too much about it.

Then I Saw the Numbers

After talking with my friend, I got curious and looked at my Steam achievements.

That's when I realized something I hadn't really thought about before.

Only less than 10% of players had achieved the same thing I had.

I was surprised.

I had spent months playing the game and eventually got to NG+8, but in my head, it never felt like I had done something particularly special.

I had spent so much time watching other people do difficult things that I started to think those things were normal.

What I thought was normal was actually something very few players had done.

And that made me think about how much the people around us can change the way we see what is possible.

I Don't Usually Ask If I Can

Looking back, I think this is how I approach a lot of things in my life.

When I want to do something, I don't usually spend much time asking myself or anyone if I'm capable of doing it.

I just start.

I might not know how to do everything. I might fail a few times, or realize that something is much harder than I expected. But once I have started, I can figure things out along the way.

I think that was exactly what happened with Sekiro.

I didn't tell myself that I was going to beat one of the hardest games ever made. I just wanted to beat the next boss. Then the next one. Then the next one.

Before I knew it, I had finished the game, finished it again, and somehow ended up at NG+8.

Maybe I wasn't especially good at the game. Maybe I just never gave myself a reason to believe that I couldn't finish it.

Make Hard Things Feel Normal

I think the people around us have a bigger influence on us than we realize.

If everyone around you is doing something difficult, you start to see it as something normal. You stop thinking about whether it is possible and start thinking about how you are going to do it.

That's probably what happened to me with Sekiro. I kept seeing people beat difficult bosses, learn complicated moves, and finish the game. They made it look like something that could be done.

So I never really saw finishing the game as something that was out of reach.

I think the same thing can happen outside of games too.

If you surround yourself with people who build things, start businesses, learn difficult skills, or constantly try things that scare them, those things start to feel more normal.

You might still fail, but you are less likely to look at something difficult and immediately decide that it isn't for you.

Sometimes you just need to see enough people do something before you start believing that you can do it too.