Not Everything That Demands Your Time Deserves Your Attention: Go Deeper & Find the Gold
What Donkey Kong teaches us about healing, hustle & going deeper
July 21, 2025
Last week I had surgery. It was planned, necessary, and like most things in life that demand healing, it quietly rearranged everything that felt like a priority. My body needed deep rest and somewhere between post-op recovery naps and my doctor-prescribed daily stretches, I found myself on a nostalgic adventure… thanks to a jungle, a gorilla, and a gift from my husband.
I grew up obsessed with Donkey Kong 64. The problem-solving, the imagery, the sensation of being dropped into a world that felt so real. I referenced it several times over the years and how it made me feel.
About a month ago, my husband surprised me with a Nintendo Switch 2 so that when Donkey Kong Bananza released, I would be set up for maximum recovery. A gesture of love, but also an invitation: to play, to rest, to return to a part of myself I had unknowingly put on pause for years.
And what unfolded was nothing short of a metaphor for healing, ambition, and the wild terrain of being a entrepreneur with big dreams that make you question the “how” on a daily basis.
๐ฎ What This Game Is Teaching Me (That SELF-HELP Books Never Quite Did)
Hereโs the thing: within minutes of playing Bananza, the ground literally collapses. The game world sinks beneath the earth, layer by layer, level by level. You donโt climb higher to win. You descend. You go deeper.
Every time you conquer a stage, you’re not rewarded with a mountaintop viewโyouโre dropped even further below.
At first, I felt resistance: Shouldn’t I be climbing out? Getting closer to the surface? (Starting my life again after this surgery?)
But the game was showing me something else entirely.
Just like healing. Just like growth. Just like real-life transformationโฆ
What if the treasure isn’t at the top, but buried deeper within?
โ๏ธ Down Isnโt BackwardsโItโs Beneath
That realization cracked something open.
Weโre conditioned to believe that life โbeginsโ once we reach the top. Once we heal. Once we accomplish. Once we prove our worth through productivity and checkmarks and performance.
But what if life is unfolding right here? In the sublayers. In the descent.
Playing this game reminded me: you can look at your situation one of two ways:
- The Underdog Loop: You keep trying, but you’re always buried. Always behind. Never enough. You live in a perpetual state of catching up to your โrealโ life.
- The Inner Adventure: You stop chasing surface-level success and start getting curious about what lives inside the levels below. You use challenges as gateways. You explore your emotions with the same curiosity and drive youโd explore a new world. You realize healing isnโt a pitstop. Itโs the path.
๐ก A Floodlight, Not a Flashlight
When I zoom out, I realize what this whole experience is teaching me:
Transformation doesnโt require hustle. It requires illumination.
Itโs taking a floodlight to the parts of our lives weโve been avoiding:
- The difficult conversation we keep postponing
- The โsillyโ dream we keep sidelining
- The to-do thatโs been sitting at the bottom of our list that would actually shift everything
- The guilt that tells us we have to earn rest before we deserve it
Instead of waiting for burnout, for surgery, for the breakdown moment to give ourselves permission to slow downโฆ what if we just began now?
With a slower sip of your morning tea.
A fiction book.
A puppy snuggle.
A video game.
Or a walk outside that doesnโt have to be โproductiveโ to be necessary.
๐Map Making for the high achieving, busy MIND
Hereโs a little exerciseโDonkey Kong-style.
- Grab a piece of paper. Draw two dots: where you are and where you want to go.
- Now on a separate paper, brain dump your to-dos, ideas, even your guilt-fueled “shoulds”.
- One by one, ask yourself: Does this belong on the map between here and there?
- If the answer is yes, great, keep it. If not, bless and release.
Not everything that demands your time deserves your attention.
Some things are distractions dressed as responsibilities.
โจ Redefining Productivity
Iโm learning (again and again) that productivity isnโt just emails sent and checkmarks made.
Itโs moments of clarity between tasks.
Itโs energy returned after connection.
Itโs peace that fuels actionโnot replaces it.
That friend catch-up over coffee?
That nap with your dog in the sun?
That creative project with maybe zero monetizable outcome?
All map-worthy. All necessary.
If you’re nodding your head… if you feel a sense of relief just reading this… then I want to invite you to:
- Discover a mindfulness practice that feels good and fits your life
- Rewire your relationship with productivity, so it nourishes you, not depletes you
- Find rest that rebuilds you instead of guilt that weighs you down
- And most importantly, learn how to play again. Not as a reward, but as a rhythm
Because your life (the gold) doesnโt begin once you reach the surface. It’s happening right now.
With love, presence, and a permission slip to be fully yourself,
Katherine
