GoodByWeekly #3: Life advice we learned from Pokemon ft. @thewokesalaryman

Yuuuuur! Austin on the keyboard this week, and I a post on IG yesterday about the "Pokemon Rules for Life" and I wanted to share the it with y’all. Y’all might not know this but I am a huge nerd and Pokemon lover. If you’ve seen the pod or one of the A-sides you might have seen Gengar floating around in the background.

I played a lot of games and watched many cartoons as a kid and I always felt like the stories were so meaningful in ways I couldn’t express, so shoutout to @thewokesalaryman who made a comic that managed to capture the life advice you could get by playing Pokemon.

The Pokemon Rules for Life:

1. Magikarp is proof you don’t know what you’re doing from ages 1-19, and that’s completely normal. If you keep going you might become a badass at some point.
2. Eevee reminds us all there are many ways to evolve. As a Pokemon. Also as a person. It’s lame to force everyone to do the same few occupations. Not everyone’s final form is a doctor or lawyer. (Or most recently, a software engineer.)
3. Slowpoke might look derpy, but it’s ability ‘Own Tempo’ prevents it form being confused. With many people in our lives telling us how to live our life and what to buy, @thewokesalaryman says, “We need to be like Slowpoke now more than ever.” March to the beat of your own drum!
4. If you need a reminder of why friends are important look no further than Dugtrio or Magneton. Sometimes all you need is like-minded people. United we stand, divided we fall.
5. Hitmonlee and it’s move ‘High Jump Kick’ is all about risk vs reward. Land it, and you do massive damage. But if you miss you fall and lose half your hp. Like Hitmonlee be careful about the big moves you make in life! When it’s all or nothing, sometimes you get nothing!
6. Just like Pokemon sometimes we need to find a new place to shine. Some Pokemon like Kadabra, Haunter, and Machoke need to be traded to another trainer in order to evolve. Perhaps that says something about your comfort zone. So if you feel like you’re stagnating for some reason and reached a plateau maybe it’s time to go. This could be a new workplace, a country, or a new safe space to grow.
7. BONUS: You're never too old to love Pokemon and the messages that it teaches.

Shoutout to Singapore!

@thewokesalaryman is from Singapore, a country I was lucky enough to visit a couple years ago with a few of my best friends. I think that sometimes we think the world is this massive incomprehensible place, full of differences and conflict and don't realize how similar we are. As Humans we often alienate ourselves from others in pursuit of our own individuality. Individuality is often misconstrued as a mark of meaning and value. We fight to have a unique individual purpose but we forget to struggle is to be human, because there’s billions of us, many of us will have the same problems.

There are potentially millions of people who will have dreams that compliment mine and struggles that mirror my own, which is comforting to me because it means I'm not struggling alone. Our problems aren't what makes us unique and they never were, it's all about how we choose to solve them. I think the most amazing part of being alive is our ability to face the same problem and handle it in our unique way. At the end of the day there's more that connects us out there than divides us, like Pokemon, with that said check out some pictures from Singapore here.

Have a good week everyone, catch you on the next one!