Wigger

Day 39 Hahaha, i didn't know it had been this long already. Life is incredible, truly beautiful. For the past 3 weeks i have worked hard to open my own web shop. Its a dutch webshop for educative toys, which links nicely to my bachelor in psychology! Its truly been a blessing, and very soon i will have my stock and start selling! Life feels much better these days, life is good. Im getting further and further and lately i have been thinking of doing some exams for becoming a realtor. Just on the side for fun. I would advise everyone to stop gaming. But not just gaming, whatever you are addicted to. Free yourself, free your time and make your own life. It will be hard work, but the rewards will make you happy. It will make you feel good about yourself. It will allow you to stand straight and be a man. I was once such an idiot. I only spend my time gaming and effectively ruined my life and myself. It was time to grow up. I am happy i decided to grow up and be a man. Thank you all for helping me, i am thankful

Thank you for the tips. I've been thinking about the airplane for the past couple of days. It seems to fit all too well. Its just that i love the flying feeling so much that i have difficulty living without it. On the other side, if i were to find that same feeling in useful things that could become a huge advantage for me. Thank you

Well darn, that is actually quite an observation. I think you are pretty right here. To be honest, i do feel the need to keep flying and relaxing is not that easy for me. I do meditation once a while and that helps. Im not sure where to go from here, haha. I like life the most when im working and see progress and growth in what i do

Facebook has also shown to have a negative effect on the self-confidence of people. This is due to people mostly posting the positive (perfect) pictures, thus giving a wrong view of reality, making other people feel like their life sucks. Also, the whole thumb up system is a dangerous one because it gives a sense of measurement about someone's pictures/actions etc. Its probably best to ask ourselves personally whether we can handle all this

Oh i love a cynic. Cynics are very important to have in the world. But may i ask, have you always felt like a cynic, or just for some time?

We are different people in different contexts, but we still have characteristics that are rather stable during our lifetime. Although we can be ourself, the way we conduct ourselves can be very different and develop over time. For example, someone can have anger issues. As a child this is shown by throwing a tantrum, a 14 year old might fight, a 22 year old might give someone a firm talk, a 40 year old can use it in a constructive way and calmly explain things to someone. Maybe being ourself is not as much the problem as they way we bring our characteristics to the outside world

When you talk about how to be more charismatic and socially pleasant it seems a bit like you are searching the solution in making yourself better. What could help more though, is trying to lay the focus on other people. When you try to take an interest in other people and ask how they are doing (doing your best to make them feel at ease), you might just find doing the same for you

Research has shown that people really enjoy conversations in which they themselves talk about 80%. This makes the solution for social skills very easy. Ask questions and take interest in other peoples lives, ask how things are going and follow up on them later. When you try to make other people feel good by listening to them, you'll often see it being returned. However, if it it very one-sided it is often a sign that you should move on to someone else. Source: Psychology University bachelor

Good luck my friend, and welcome to the forum! Keep strong, stay on course!

Day 19 Hell has officially begun. Let me try to find the words to explain what is going on. When i was gaming the world went very fast. I got a lot of rewards and that gave me the high's i needed. I felt like i had a goal and was always enthusiastically working towards that. The goal gave me direction in life and made me feel like it is worth living. Right now i feel like i have no direction. I don't get any (quick) rewards and therefore i get no high's, and its driving me crazy. I feel like i've been dropped in the darkness and there is no way to go, there is nothing to see anywhere. Life seems to have lost its color and it is making me depressed. Now i truly feel like an addict. For me, this is the hardest part of the detox. I don't like gaming anymore, but i feel like i need it even though it won't get me pleasure (my brain is trying to convince me otherwise though). Last time i tried to stop, i failed during this chapter of the detox. I am most afraid for this part. The foresight of feeling like this for a few weeks sucks. Lets see if it builds character. I will not game.

Hey buddy! havent heard from you in a long time, are you doing alright?

seems like im at day 15 already. It has been going enormously fast, mostly due to the amount of studying i have been doing. For almost 2 weeks i've done about 6 hours of studying a day. The most difficult parts are the end of the days when its about 20:00 and i just feel tired. Those are the moments that i'd like to game. But the urges are pretty much under control now and only creep up a few times a day. Tomorrow i got my 2 exams and i feel very nervous. They are part of my premaster and therefore required if i want to do my master next year. Im the most scared for after these two exams. I will have a lot of time after them (1 course during the next 8 weeks) and im afraid this will make it much more difficult to keep myself from gaming. Therefore i have decided i want to do a few days of iceland to clear my mind and come up with a list to work on. My days have been so very productive that im thinking about keeping up this pace. So far i got on my list: - fixing a website to sell educational toys via my own website (and not some intermediate (they squeeze out all the profit -_-)) - Studying Adwords - Doing PR for my student association - Learning Chinese (i started once but stopped again) - Fixing my knee injury by doing my exercises - Maybe get a part time job as an internetmarketeer

Day 6 Today is already day 6. Its been going quite well but i feel like i have cheated. I played hearthstone on my iPhone. While it is technically on the iPhone it is a computer game and a game altogether. Therefore, i will be starting over tomorrow (and of course remove the game right now together with clash of clans). I also have been watching too a few episodes of family guy today. This weekend i did a lot of useful stuff though. I helped my girlfriend move to her new apartment and helped her build an IKEA bed. Don't tell anyone, but we had to take the whole bed apart like 2 times because of errors me made, we ended up spending 2 days putting a simple bed together . The bed was pretty nice though On the plus side, i started doing planking exercises today. Also, im almost completely caught up with my studies, so thats good. Social interaction seems to be going a lot better as well. All together, im quite happy with not gaming, even though its pretty hard to go through this detox.

Day 3 I forgot to do this yesterday I found it very hard to concentrate. The night before i had watched a movie in bed and did some reading on my phone. I woke up with my eye's hurting. It the sort of day that i would normally spend gaming. Being tired, not really wanting to do anything. Just hard to focus myself. It was actually pretty hard to keep myself from it, so i decided to not make a study day, but do other useful stuff. So i went cleaning and visiting other people (this actually helped a lot). I must say, this detox is still going pretty well. I suspect it is because i have already sort of detoxed. I don't like gaming anymore, however, i feel like i still need it. And that distinction is an important one. I feel like i can consciously fight the urges that come from the heart. The hard part is the emptiness that this detox is making me feel. Life is starting to lose its edge and becomes less exciting. I feel like i have less to live for and less goals to work towards, and i think that is the real difficult part. Therefore i have decided to really look for other activities. My girlfriend suggested to start learning chinese again, which i think is a really good suggestion already. Also, i think i would like to learn how to invest. I just hope these activities will fill the void enough to keep me from gaming

Day 2 Today was a good day. I had one of the best nights sleep in a few months. I still can't believe that days are this long, its absolutely ridiculous. Got about 6 hours of studying done today, which is pretty needed considering how much i still have to do. Only 3 weeks till the exams! I found myself in the need for breaks, but im not sure how to relax now that i don't do gaming anymore (and neither watch series). Although, to be honest, i did watch 2 episodes today during food breaks (breakfast and lunch). After some time my head was quite full and i couldn't really force myself to continue, so i put on good rock music as loud as i could and just kept walking through the room while saying whatever came into my head. It worked like a charm. It seems that if i force my mind too much into a position it will wear out, after that i need to let it do whatever it wants for a bit. Looking forward to further testing this (it helped a lot because when i get tired and bored i get urges to game, i feel that this keeps it under control better). I actually got all the tasks i had planned for today done, including working a bit on the website. Tomorrow is a long schoolday though, i feel the lectures are very inefficient. Im a bit afraid it is going to cause me want to start gaming again. Till this point its going pretty well because i can keep myself busy, life seems to be clearer, better and longer. Cant complain!