Improvement pill here welcome to the question and animation series where I answer your questions with fancy animations just comment down below if your question and maybe you'll get featured in our next episode today we have a question from Tony Perez who asks tell us your backstory when was the point you began your own self change you got it so the high school I went to had a very interesting tradition the graduating class would host a sort of battle royale the month before we all graduated and this was way before Fortnight and PUBG were even a thing now the rules were pretty simple you had to pay five dollars to join and it was winner-take-all however the game would only last about two weeks so in the case that there was more than one survivor at the very end the prize pool would be split every single day you would receive a text message from the game master he would tell you who your target of the day was this was the person that you had a hunt down and kill not physically with a knife alright all you had to do was mark them on their skin with a marker which was pretty funny because the battle royale took place in the summer so he had people showing up to school in 90-degree weather with hoodies and jackets on now there were a couple of other rules number one you were not allowed to skip school or cut classes if you were caught doing so you'd be disqualified number two you were immune while in class this was to prevent the game from interfering with actual schoolwork number three if you killed someone your new target would be their target so if Sam killed Ben and Ben's target with Shelly Sam's new target would be Shelly number four if you killed three people in the span of 24 hours you would gain immunity which meant nobody could touch you for 24 hours so that was the more aggressive strategy hunt down three people and you could relax number five you had to kill at least one person throughout the game this would prevent people from playing to passively but that was it you only had to kill one person and finally number six you were allowed to kill the person who was hunting you only problem was you didn't know who it was so you either had to set up like a sort of spy now where I can find out from your friends who was after you or you would have to dodge your assailants first strike and strike back so a large chunk of the graduating class signed up for the Battle Royale I don't remember the exact numbers but we had like a good two 300 people participating which meant the price pool was pretty big especially for a bunch of high school kids so everyone took it very very seriously the first couple of days were crazy people were dying left and right every couple of hours you would get a text message about who just got killed how many people were remaining and who was immune for the day people were even hunting each other down outside of school I remember taking the subway and seeing two kids in hoodies slashing at each other with markers on the train now I got lucky on the second day my target was this girl that I had class with I don't even think she took the game seriously because she showed up in a normal shirt she wasn't worried at all so right after class I just walked up behind her / she marked her neck and that was that I got my first kill by the end of the third day there were only like 50 people left now my strategy was simple I figured because I had already gotten my one kill I just had to play passively to win there was no point in going out of my way to hunt down my new targets in the hopes of getting that immunity bonus it was just too risky so I played it safe I went straight to class I kept all my books on me so I didn't have to go to my locker I skipped lunch which wasn't that hard because the school lunch was pretty bad and during my free periods I would hide out on the first floor where almost nobody ever went so the first week went by and there were only like 30 people left and one day I remember taking the stairs out of the first floor to go to my next class and I get stopped by this girl this was a girl that I had shared a couple of classes with throughout my four years in high school she looked at me and asked do you know who Richard is and I thought to myself wow that's that that's me her target is probably me hmm wow I'm so lucky she doesn't remember who I am so of course I was like nope sorry can't help you and I quickly walked away for the rest of the week I basically did the same thing I stuck to my strategy and I played extremely passively and then the game was over there were four survivors and I was one of them I felt great I had actually won a real-life battle royale so the game master sends out a text congratulating all the winners and he asks us to meet up with him so he could give us the prize money so I went I got like 200 bucks and the game master looked at me and was like oh so you're Richard yeah man it's crazy people couldn't figure out who you were and that's when I realized I won the Battle Royale not because I played it safe or because of my amazing strategy I won because people genuinely did not know who I was and these were people that I had shared classes with for four years and that struck a chord with me I thought about my high school career and I realized just how pathetic and sad it was people always say high school supposed to be one of the best periods of your life I don't necessarily believe that but still high school should have been a better experience than what I went through see all I did was hang out the same 4 or 5 friends never joined any real clubs I never went out of my way to meet any new people instead I would just go straight home after classes and play video games all night long I had crushes on so many girls throughout the years but I never had the balls to ask any of them out instead I spent my free time hooked on porn jerking off like 2 or 3 times a day I cruised through school I would just copy homework and barely pass my classes I didn't give a damn about my future I knew my parents wanted me to go to college so I applied to the one college that everyone applied to because you were basically guaranteed to get in I was so broke that I would literally sit there and watch my friends eat whenever we went out and if there were any leftovers they would give it to me all in all I was a loser on nobody my high school career was so uneventful that I was practically invisible but by pure chance right after I graduated from high school during that summer break before I headed off to college I came across something that would change my life forever see I was browsing a forum for a game that I was basically addicted to and I came across a thread where someone mentioned self-improvement and they provided a link to a self-improvement forum now before this I had never heard of the concept I genuinely thought that people were just born the way they were and that we were stuck this way till we died I thought the successful popular kids were just lucky having been blessed with good lucks charisma motivation and all that good stuff but as I browsed this forum I came across story after story about people who had strikingly similar backgrounds as me losers and nobodies but they would all talk about how they were able to completely change their life around all because of self-development all because of a couple of books they would read and a couple of habits they would build and I was immediately hooked I remember staying up all night just binge reading as many these posts as possible and that's what I realized that I could do this too it doesn't sound too complicated sure it sounds like hard work but if it was possible to change my life that drastically then it would all be worth it and that's when I decided that I would embark on a self-development journey and the rest is well well let that's a story for another day
