Life’s Cheat Codes

When people are frustrated with a video game, most people love a good cheat code to get through it. Boss beating you up? Infinite health prevents you from dying. Run out of ammunition? Infinite ammo code to allow you to destroy everything from hundreds of feet away. Can’t get past a difficult platforming stage? Use a cheat to jump, fly, or even skip over the level. Many people talk about real life in relation to video games, such as, “Life isn’t a Nintendo game. There’s no saving and no reset button.” Yes, you can’t save your progress and reload, nor can you start over your current life. However, are there “cheat codes” in real life?

The short answer is yes, there are. However, there are ethical and unethical cheats in real life. Since I do not promote specific ethics on this blog as a rule, we’ll stick with the general, universally accepted ethic of maximizing or optimizing your own growth with minimal harm to others. Given that definition, anything that harms someone in a way that is not either in self-defense or part of improving them (e.g., surgery, behavior correction) is going to be deemed unethical for the purposes of this post.

Let’s start with the unethical “cheat codes” in life. First, there is what everyone calls “cheating” in relationships, infidelity. If you commit to someone and both parties promise fidelity, then cheating is an unethical cheat code to get through married life. Second, there is cheating in terms of value delivered and received in the world. This includes stealing, freeloading, committing fraud, and other forms of getting money, goods, or services without the appropriate reciprocation. These are generally unethical ways to obtain what you want in life because they come at someone else’s expense—someone else had to work, while you enjoyed the benefits without their consent. Finally, there are other forms of cheating, such as using manipulation, coercion, intimidation, violence, and other means to get your way in life. While this post is obviously not condoning the use of these kind of “cheat codes” in your life, they are what people usually think of when they hear the concept.

No, these aren’t the literal cheat codes used in video games, such as having infinite health, energy, money, time, or resources. Unfortunately, you can’t wave a magic want and get 100 reputation or relationship points from all other humans, nor can you instantly learn all skills or complete all life tasks or goals. But they are ways to cheat in life to get ahead, and that’s what we’re talking about here.

So, what are the ethical “cheat codes” if unethical cheating is harmful and video game cheat codes don’t exist? Well, there are generally things you can do in life to come as close to guaranteeing success as you’ll ever get:

• Increase Your Skill Level – being more capable makes you more valuable in the real world, which increases your income (by being able to do more highly paid work) and reduces your costs (by being able to do things for yourself that would cost more to ask others to do for you). The better you are at difficult tasks and the more you know, the better off you are.
  
• Exercise Responsible Financial Planning – In life, you’ll want to earn more than you spend for a long time until you become old enough where you either want or need to stop working and spend more than you earn. Maximizing your income, minimizing your costs, saving for the future, and not taking on any major financial burdens (e.g., school loans well above your expected salary, houses or cars beyond your means, unplanned offspring, excessive partying, vacationing, or leisure spend) will ensure financial stability that will enable you to live well and meet your long-term goals.
• Provide Value to Others – Humans have reciprocity built into their DNA to survive as a social species. Yes, people are heavily self-interested and will often try to get something for nothing, but social norms and legal frameworks exist to ensure that people generally want to exchange goods and services for mutual benefit. As such, if you want something in life, you have to be willing to give something in exchange for it. That works regarding your own personal goals, such as winning the Super Bowl requires thousands and thousands of hours of work to achieve, and also in relationship to others, such as being willing to do something that another person wants to do if you want them to be willing to do what you want to do. While you want to be selective about who you trust enough to provide value for reciprocal benefit, you have to be willing to provide that value instead of always waiting for others to provide value first if you want to maximize your chances of success.
• Be Someone that Others Want to Be Around – There are some things you cannot change, such as your attractiveness, your height, and your race. And, sadly, there are people who won’t associate with you based on those kinds of attributes. There’s nothing I can do or say about that, nor is there anything you can do or say to change that. But what you can do is improve the things that you can change that will lead to better social outcomes. Being a friendly person—whatever that means for the people you hope to associate with—is within your control. That might mean changing your dress, manners, speech, or even people you associate with who aren’t really your friends. Some people think this is being fake, and there is an inauthentic way of doing this if you hate the person or personality you are becoming or taking on. But you can be true to yourself while still making yourself more pleasing to others. You don’t have to pretend to like things or wear clothes you despise, but you do have to look well-groomed if you want other well-groomed people to want to be around you (back to the reciprocity point made earlier). Happy people like happy people, and fun people like fun people. As a result, you cannot be unhappy and boring and expect to attract happy, fun people. So, be the kind of person you want to associate with to maximize your chances of attracting that person (socially and/or romantically).
• Take Care of Yourself (and the People You Care About) – This is strangely a cheat code that’s the opposite of another cheat code. Unhealthy food, alcohol, sex, gambling, and other pleasure-inducing substances and behaviors are “cheat codes” to getting a dopamine hit in your brain to feel good. No doubt, those are very effective at turning your mood around quickly if you need a pick-me-up, but they are not effective at contributing to your long-term success. So, strangely, the “cheat code” for long-term health and well-being is the opposite of that cheat code: eat well, avoid drugs and alcohol, have responsible sex in a healthy relationship (meaning not codependent, abusive, or self-destructive; I’m not prescribing a specific type of relationship), and save and invest in things that improve your life. In other words, take care of yourself. Especially if you are responsible for someone else, as you cannot help others as much if you are not your best self.
• Live Your Own Life – You cannot please everyone all the time, and you cannot save the world or live someone else’s life. You are you, and you have your own wants, needs, interests, and capabilities. You will be a lot happier in the long term if you ask yourself what you want and do what you think is best for yourself and the people you care about. No one has the ability to live your life for you, and you can’t keep up a charade forever without eventually exhausting yourself. So, make decisions that you believe are right for you. I’ll use myself as an example just to prove it to you (and to prove that I don’t push my ethics onto others in this blog): there are many things I don’t like. I don’t care for tattoos, piercings, mingling (I’m an introvert), things that make unnecessary loud noise (e.g., motorcycles), and grapefruit. That’s nice. Who cares? It shouldn’t be you who does. If you want to tattoo and pierce yourself up, mingle every day, ride a Harley Davidson to your job shouting through a megaphone every day, and go on a grapefruit diet, those are your choices to make. It’s your life.

Now, you might be thinking, “How are these cheat codes?” Well, all the data captured on happiness and success point to things like these as being important. For example, the famous “three rules to avoiding poverty” are to graduate from high school (acquire skills), get a full-time job (provide value to others), and get married before having children (exercise responsible financial planning). The thing that people near their death cite as wishing they had done more of is spend more time with family (take care of yourself/live your own life) instead of other life activities. The famous saying, “You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with,” is referencing how your friends influence you (for better or for worse), so therefore you should be someone who the people who would benefit your life would want to be around. There are many, many examples of how these kinds of best practices make life much, much easier, which is what the essence of a “cheat code” is all about: making the game (of life) easier.

So, the next time you find yourself in a difficult situation, remember what your “cheat codes” are. Most people want to give up, turn to pleasure-inducing behaviors and substances, or “reduce the difficulty” (i.e., doing the bare minimum to survive). But the key to “God mode” (the famous cheat code that gives you everything you want, making you super powerful) in life is building yourself up. That takes work, but it makes you the best possible version of yourself, which is the closest you’ll ever get to a real-life easy mode. After all, as the saying goes, “Strong men create good times.” Be the strong person, and create good times.