Cam Adair

Hey Marco! Thanks for joining us here! Especially as a fellow Canadian! I can't wait to come out to Toronto some time soon. Maybe in late September. I definitely relate to you about being bullied. I was bullied a lot in school too (I shared my story here) and it's one of the main reasons I gamed. When it comes to your little brother, remember that you need to have boundaries. If gaming isn't something you want to do that's #1, and now it's up to your creativity to find ways to hang out with your little brother without gaming. You aren't quitting games because games are bad, you're quitting them because for whatever reason, they don't serve your highest good and you have a desire for something else in life. You're allowed to make that choice for yourself. What you want to do is find ways to hang out with him without gaming. It's easiest when you're out of the house, so maybe find a few activities you can do together that would be fun. You have your license now, there's a lot of fun things you can find for him and his friends. Plus your relationship will be better when you have actual time to spend together instead of just "hanging out" by playing games. Hope you're having a great day!

?Ah damn. Anyways, it's basically a number (you can google around if you want) that when you call it says the person wasn't interested in you and you've been rejected! I used to give it to girls at the club as a joke.

?I'll adjust the setting tomorrow. Forum is picking up momentum! ?Try calling this: 408-344-9412 (San Jose)

Did you give him the rejection hotline? That would be a classic.

?I'll be back in California starting in October probably for a few months. Likely be in LA mostly but I'll definitely be making a few trips to SF and I'll stop by SJ on the way.

?Nice dude! Love the board and your room nice and organized! Pic of you in the sunnies is money. Can't wait to hit the beach in California together!

?Haha it's all good man, it's good learning for you anyways. Maybe what you want to try is to find an event you can attend where it's a bit more expected for people to socialize, and then try the techniques out there. (Ironically, that's tomorrow's mission. )

Hey man, these kind of events will happen. Even for me the other day, I was riding home on my scooter here in Thailand and out of nowhere I felt myself feeling very emotional and tears almost came down my eyes. It was pretty random, haha. But in those moments, as meditation teaches you, you want to focus on being equanimous. You don't need to suppress the emotions you're feeling, you just want to take a step back, notice them, feel them, take a breath, and then keep going. If you ever want to talk about the break-up, let me know. I've had some rough ones myself. Remember this time, because there will come a time in the future where you have these kind of thoughts about your ex, and although part of you may always wish it had gone down a different way, you'll actually be super grateful for the situation (even though it was really bad at the time)... because it's lead you to where you are today, and where you are today is really great! You still have those days and that's being human, but you're so much closer to being happy and fulfilled than you were a year ago, or six months ago, or even two months ago. Or even yesterday! Because you're on the right path now and you're taking action to create an amazing life for yourself. This is exactly what you want to do. Don't talk about it, be about it. Let your life be the example of what you stand for. People like to talk a lot, or think a lot, but it's the few who take the action everybody is talking about or thinking about that get to live the type of life everyone is dreaming of. You're living your life every day, doing things every day, waking up every day, living the same 24 hours as everybody else, every single day. You might as well ?leverage it and live it to the fullest. Trust me, it's worth it. (And it only gets better and better over time.) This is a big summer for you. In tough times, because they will happen, remember to shift your focus to how you will feel about yourself at the end of the summer. How PROUD of yourself you will be at the end of summer. Use that as motivation. (When you have a spare 30 minutes, you can read this post I haven't released publicly yet about my TEDxBoulder talk. It shares some of the same concepts in it.) Good job getting your morning routine together and the rest of your schedule. They both look great. ?One of the big advantages we have when we start scheduling our day is we become aware of just how much time we do have, just like you noticed. The reason we gamed was exactly what you said - you had all this time, and you didn't have anything else going on, so of course you want to game (and justify it). Remember that part of why you would add gaming (in moderation) is because it's what you know. As you continue to find new activities and projects to work on that are leading you towards your goals, you'll find the desire to game will diminish. For example, I could game if I wanted. But why would I do that when I can spend those two hours learning about something I really want to learn about? Or to go explore and find a waterfall here in Thailand, or to work on growing my business (to create more opportunity and impact), or to hang out with a friend who, after spending time when them, I leave with a big smile on my face more inspired than ever? Don't underestimate how passionate you can become of the new activities you pour your time into, over time. ?Have a great day man. Let's make the most of it.

Hey Ryan! Thanks for joining us here, we're really happy you're here with us. This is a big step for you that you will look back on as a turning point in your life. I tend to be quite introverted too (If I was to guess, over 50% of those who struggle with gaming addiction are more introverted than extroverted), but it's important to remember that being an introvert just means you recharge with alone time, whereas an extrovert recharges by being around other people. That's a big mindset shift I had that helped me, as an introvert, start stepping out of my comfort zone (baby steps) and to start interacting with other people. It's not that I didn't like interacting, it's more that I just need the right environment (more quiet, 1on1, coffee shop type vibe than night club), and the type of conversation needed to be engaging (this was at least 50% my responsibility in any conversation), so I would focus on putting myself in environments where they would naturally filter out people I normally wouldn't want to interact with. I went to things like The Higher Purpose Project and StartingBloc, where likeminded people focused on personal development and social entrepreneurship would be. Anyways, I know I relapsed after I quit initially and I don't know any others who haven't experienced relapse either, so don't worry about that too much. Learn from each one and how you can set yourself up for success moving forward. Follow the steps in Respawn, put your energy into having a schedule and being intentional with how you spend your time, and share any struggles you're experiencing here with us. We've got your back.

Hey Avinash! Great to see you here, looking forward to you being a part of our community. I definitely agree with avoiding sugar, especially soda/pop. I plan to talk more about this in the future, maybe in a podcast episode with a friend who's a sugar "addiction" expert.

Haha sorry guys. I was off exploring in Thailand today (with a girl even!) and missed all of this. Good entertainment though. It's not the first nor last time something silly like this will happen. It reminds me of the days I'd wake up and see a ton of new traffic coming to my how to quit article, and after looking into it I'd find entire forum threads telling me I'm a loser. Always good for a laugh. The thing is, you can tell a lot about the quality of someone's life based on the types of problems they have: The thing is, what someone wants to do with their life is completely up to them. You can learn a lot about your friends when you make big changes in your life. This type of thing happens in many different areas. Straight up I "lost" friends when I moved to a new city to pursue my dreams. It happens all the time, but the ones you want to invest in are the ones who regardless of what decisions you make, you know you can depend on them to either be supportive and encouraging OR to pull you aside like an adult and share their thoughts and feelings in a well-thought out and articulate way you can respect. Focus on the friends that inspire you to be your best. We all have our own journey and we're all allowed to take responsibility to create the type of life we want. Anybody that says otherwise is completely full of shit.

?Make sure you're stretching! That will help a lot with soreness. I remember being in Austria and experiencing the awkwardness of small talk. Remember that this is a process and part of that process is experiencing the awkwardness and then adapting and finding ways to push past the initial resistance. Although it may not be normal in Austria, one way you can think about it is that them leaving right away has more to do with their autopilot more than it has to do with them not being interested in the conversation. Keep testing it out, maybe try adding a quick question before the baiting statement to draw their attention. Make sure you are smiling and being relaxed. Sometimes if I sense they aren't too engaged at the start, I will focus more on talking to them again before I leave once they have a bit more familiarity with me. And I will say, I remember being in Austria at a cafe and having an extended conversation with the baristas there who were interested in how I was working on my laptop. So although it didn't happen every time, it did happen. Keep going.

?Balance is usually the answer, but in that conversation we often forget that in any discussion about balance it's really a discussion of polarities. It's a spectrum and you need to identify what exactly you are trying to balance. The means of not sheltering but also encouraging kids to have different interests involves a fine touch. I don't think many of us were discouraged from having other interests, but over time we just learned that our interests were in computers, the internet and gaming. It was our passion. Still lots for me to think about when it comes to the parents side of the equation. I get emails from them that I have few answers to at the moment.

A few tracks: If you want a 2 hour mix along the lines of the above, check out the Spor Essential Mix. I also really like the S.P.Y. Essential Mix.

?Still trying to formulate my opinion on this. I don't think the answer is sheltering, nor is it giving a 2 year old an iPad for Christmas.

?My friend Thad Roberts (google him, very interesting guy) once told me he kept a journal (or file) of any question he ever had, and he'd go through it on a weekly basis to find the answers to whatever questions he had. Questions could be big things or small ones, didn't matter. ?I would say don't develop expectations, period. Expectations are the root of disappointment (in yourself) and resentment (in others). An important distinction I'd encourage you to have is that expectations are not necessary to pursuit of excellence and/or achievement. There's a difference between holding yourself accountable and bringing your best, having values and standards of excellence you live by with integrity and having expectations. I would focus much more on identifying and consciously defining the values you live by (the pillars of your life) than I would on having expectations that lead to the experience of negative emotions of which create shame and guilt.

Attachment and Motivation have overlapping theories but I believe they are also different in nature. A quick google search shows a number of studies done that dive into the overlap between attachment theory and motivation (slightly different than what we are discussing here) but may be interesting to research further. For me it relates to a quote Zan Perrion once told me that changed my life: "Be open to all outcomes and attached to none." ?

?To ensure you don't fall back into bad habits you need to make sure you are updating your goals and your purpose. It's easy to get motivated and get your "shit" together when things are a mess, but once you have that setup you need to make sure you update your goals and vision for your future to continue having a purpose in why you're still maintaining the habits that make you successful. Mostly, my habits are designed in a way to feel amazing every day (see my latest video on how to deal with stress), because I too don't want to go back to depressive cycles and if my vision is to feel as amazing as possible every single day my habits are intentionally designed in a way to facilitate that. I relate to the streams. I used to love Day9 from the SC days but it just is what it is. It's like a girlfriend, you'd love to stay in touch and strive to be the type of man who's capable of having that kind of relationship, but sometimes you just need to embrace impermanence and let it go. ?Attachment is the root of all suffering as the Buddha says. Quitting games was only step one, all the things you've listed here are step two: The thing is, you're going to doubt yourself and experience all of these kind of emotions over the next 30 days. But not only the next 30 days, for the rest of your life. It's part of our life experience, and the key isn't to avoid having these emotions, it's learning how to navigate them when they come up and shift our focus back on what's important.

?Hahahaha. 30 of them actually if you go 100%.

?Mwhahahahahaa!

?Woot! I love that you were able to apply the vocal training right away and see results from it. That's the best way to learn, to experience it as soon as possible. For cold showers, maybe rewatch the video of Joel doing it. He goes in and out and I think that would help you. But either way, even a one minute cold shower is impressive!

I won't lie, I love reading all of your guys' journals!! Highlight of my day.

?It doesn't matter how many times you fall... only how many times you get up. I tried to quit a few times and failed, but eventually I learned what was necessary to be able to do it for good. Four years later I haven't played any games and my life is better than ever. Don't make the mistake of underestimating the power we all have to make important changes that create remarkable new experiences in our lives.

Nice! Love this! Definitely make sure you choose a specific time to work on these tasks. That will be the difference. A complementary book to add to your list is Getting Things Done by David Allen.

?Love this! Great project. You will definitely feel a lot better because of it. The thing is, growing up sometimes we have this misconception that structure or organization is restricting... when really it helps us create a lot of opportunities! It's a foundation. You may want to fast-forward and check out Day 13