Life can be tedious and difficult, we all know that. Just when you think you might have a handle on it a curve ball gets thrown at you, or you can end up butting your head against the same challenge over and over again. This is true for work, relationships, health, and basically every aspect of your life.

So it’s particularly strange that the entire gaming industry revolves around coming up with even more hurdles to clear. You’d think that we have enough to deal with without adding on top of that hours of hardships playing games that can drive us bananas.

Of course, we all know that it’s not quite the same for games. For the most part, no matter how hard a game is, we still can find it satisfying and worthwhile. This is because the philosophy we have toward gaming is very different than what we have for our daily lives. This doesn’t have to be the case.

With that in mind, here are 5 life lessons you can take away from games:

1. Games Have a Clear Purpose

Often your life can feel aimless. Boredom, uncertainty, and doubt can settle in making decision making not so thrilling. For games, this isn’t the case. No matter how lost you might feel in a game, there’s generally an overall goal that your aiming for. This knowledge allows you to feel that, no matter how lost you get, you’ll eventually find your way to where you want to be.

You can set one or several over goals for yourself. And if you stick to them diligently, you’ll notice that your life sort of self-organizes. Choices becomes more obvious and you have a great sense of progress and achievement since you’ll be able to tell if you’re moving in the direction of what you want or away from it.

2. There is Always Another Game To Be Played

There are many types of video games. From real-time strategy to shooters, from MOBAs to puzzles there is a game to satisfy you no matter what you’re in the mood for. This sense that you can always put down one game and play another makes them much less stressful than if you had only one.

What many don’t realize is that there are lots of games in life. From developing friendships to managing your budget, from shopping to building anything your life is a series of games tied together. If one gets too challenging and you need a break, just hop onto another one. There’s no reason why managing your home can’t be as fun as playing The Sims or Minecraft. It depends only on the attitude you choose to have.

3. Challenges are the Point in Games

Easy games are usually boring. You can find game reviewers applaud the beauty of a particular title, praise its performance, and compliment its interface, but if the game is too easy – if it doesn’t pose a significant challenge – then it’s more often than not considered a waste of time. That’s because failure is fun when it’s seen as an opportunity to try again.

The same is true about your life. If everything was handed to you with minimal effort required on your part, you’d quickly become jaded. Life’s no fun without challenges. What makes it interesting is wanting something, working your way to it, and then enjoying it when you, then starting all over again. And the more work that is required to attain your goal, the more satisfying it is when it comes. In fact, people have the most fun in games and in life during the parts they are working through a challenge rather than its completion.

4. You Will Always Get Better With Practice

What’s pretty cool about nearly all games is that, no matter how difficult it is, you will eventually succeed if you keep on persevering. There are many who’ll tell you they’ve spent days, sometimes weeks, on a level in Candy Crush or Sudoku not seeing how they’d ever pass it. Yet inevitably they do – if they keep up with it. That’s because you can’t help but get better at something the more you practice. A familiar idea that too many people forget.

You are constantly getting better at whatever you do. You can’t help it. You’re physically designed that way. So if you never give up you will eventually succeed. It really is that simple: don’t give up. Coming into this world you knew mostly nothing and now look at you. Don’t let your age, gender, income, beliefs, or circumstances deter you from this fact.

5. Life is the Most Immersive Game

Video games are always trying to be as immersive as possible. Game developers want you to feel like you are in the game so fully that everything else falls to the wayside. The more you’re taken with a game, the more fun you can have. The same is true for movies and books. To be wholly swept up in a story allows you to appreciate it as if it were happening to you.

Well, life is the most immersive of all the games. It’s basically as immersive as anything can get (for now) and because of that you can lose sight sometimes that it is a game. The trick is to regularly remind yourself that it is a game, that life has no other purpose that its own enjoyment. Don’t be fooled by how well the game is running and how real it all feels. It has just as much inherent significance as a game of Pong – which means it has no inherent significance at all. You get to decide how seriously you take all of this and how much fun you’ll let yourself have.