Superbetter

SuperBetter not only breaks down the science behind games and how they help us become physically, emotionally, mentally and socially stronger, but also gives you a 7-step system you can use to turn your own life into a game, have more fun than ever before and overcome your biggest challenges.

SuperBetter was the result of Jane fighting a severe concussion that would not heal. Since she didn’t just want to get better, but be even better than before, she came up with the name SuperBetter – simple, right?

Jane the Concussion Slayer (her alter ego in the game) battled bad guys (like bright lights), collected power-ups (like walking around the block) and eventually, landed an epic win by making a full recovery.

The underlying phenomenon Jane relied upon was post-traumatic growth. It’s when we take a crisis, catastrophe or big adversity in our life, and turn it into a stepping stone to becoming better, take it as a challenge, and find benefits in it.

This often happens to car crash victims, who find themselves appreciating life a lot more after the crash, or cancer survivors, who start running marathons once they recover.

However, you don’t need to run your car into the next tree, in order to play a round of SuperBetter. There’s another form of growth that doesn’t require trauma, called post-ecstatic growth.

This is the kind of growth that occurs after running a marathon or when you manage to quit smoking, and it’s just as powerful.

SuperBetter can help you achieve both kinds of growth, and the best part is you can design your game entirely yourself.

Think video games are all about fun?

Nope!

In a study, patients with severe burns, who had to endure painful treatments, got to play a game called SnowWorld during the procedure – the recorded brain scans showed they felt less pain, because they were giving their attention to the game.

In a similar study, people who played 10 minutes of Tetris within 6 hours after a traumatic event, like a car crash, instantly experienced a lot less involuntary flashbacks where scenes from the crash kept popping up inside their head.

Remarkable, right?

This reduction in physical pain comes from 2 things:

Playing a video game shifts our attention spotlight, and allows us to react less to the signal of pain. The activity of playing engages us in a state called flow, where we’re so engaged and absorbed in the activity that we feel in perfect control of our lives.

In this way we give our attention to a positive activity, which also makes us feel in charge. This gives us the confidence to endure the pain and our body adapts.