goodvibes

You can do it! With enough persistence not even language or culture barrier can stand against you I strongly believe. Welcome to your new respawn journey!

The more great sleep I got on a consistent basis I think is the less boring it seemed to shut down the computer earlier and the more I was looking forward to crawl into bed for more great sleep and also to my evening bath, a little sodoku magazine, evening walk with the sun setting or even just sitting outside. I set an alarm every evening for me to start that winding down routine which really helps immensely to stay on track. This is the path that worked for me and I just wanted to share that. @Frettzo@Martinof

Day 95 game detox #3 reflection. Special thanks to @Cam Adair, the podcast guy James Good iirc, and also those special guest podcasts you have all been an incredibly helpful voice of reason to bring me to my senses and encourage me to come as far as I have. I have still yet to try the Respawn program though it does still interest me I've heard nothing but good things about it. I mention neuroscientists Andrew Huberman and Matthew Walker down below in the post and they have been doing podcasts with other inspirational content creators I think it would be just fantastic to hear them weigh in at the Gamequitters podcast I feel like the knowledge they possess is most relevant to people like us who are actively working to change our lives for the better. This detox has worked out really well for me as it helped me find a total new level of health & energy through one huge asset I have come to know better than ever before in my life - good quality routine sleep-wake cycles. Perhaps I got good sleep during my previous game detox periods or at other specific and random times throughout my life but never before had I studied enough about quality sleep to understand just how many things need to come together to wake up feeling well-rested and the sad truth is if you are not feeling well-rested you are probably sleep deprived and need to do something about that. According to neuroscientist Matthew Walker this sleep deprivation thing is REALLY bad for your health and makes you more likely to have big problems with addiction. This is what makes video game addiction so tough to break from my experience I was staying up to random late night/morning hours playing losing sleep and further messing up that circadian rhythm staring at a computer screen during those hours, I was settling for faster more terrible foods and missing meals altogether further messing up circadian rhythm, I was staying inside a lot and not going out for that low solar angle sunlight in morning or evening further messing up circadian rhythm .. you can see the destructive cycle here to your most important tool (sleep) for maintaining good health & fighting off onset of addiction .. Stanford professor and neuroscientist Andrew Huberman has explained it all much better than I can hope to on his podcast but moreover I just want to credit both him and Dr Matthew Walker for freely arming me with such information to apply in all aspects of my life but most importantly here, my detox.

everything's still going well and have taken quite a bit of podcast notes which seems to be doing me great I feel like I have gotten past the phase of personal development type content now with full interest in applied neuroscience along with investing and entrepreneurship. sure it is still time consuming content but getting the feeling these things will be showing solid results for my efforts I will just have to make sure I start putting action behind it all and not too much later phase out the heavy podcast consumption.

suppose i would just give the console back to her and spare myself the family drama if that's going to be a thing. if it was a console I had bought I would just throw it away or sell it depending on market value. if I could do it again I would have taken the console apart then stuff it with at least a hundred-rounds of firecrackers and have a bit more fun with it.

fantastic report! that's all great stuff to hear I think you have a very firm handle on things. Myself lately doing great thank you recently have been taking a bit of notes on neuroscience podcasts regarding sleep / light exposure / circadian rhythm then using some applied science in my life it is so good life is great.

Well said I feel this way too it's like every so many days, daily if I'm really on top of my game, I do a little bit of maintenance adjusting that daily routine.

Hello Alex it is great to see you here starting the work to get your life back on track and I wish you the best I believe anyone who commits has the ability to do it and GQ also has a Journal section of the forum as a tool to be of help. I've had addiction issues since childhood and I know that the environment covid created did enable my addiction to resurface though more potently I think my home environment was the stronger enabler. Finding what causes and worsens addiction has been a very complicated thing in my experience but that's not to say the answer can't be reached. I used to have a clear answer for it but it just felt like that answer was coming from emotions of blame and doing me more harm than good but now days I feel that the best answer that serves me is that I was addicted because I was neglecting my own life and growth, things that the very body needs on a daily basis. If you got this far you probably have an idea what all that would all entail. It all makes a huge difference but especially proper restful sleep and maintaining circadian rhythm - gaming addiction is really great at screwing those up.

with gamer friends? I did that to two friends so far and they avoid me as if I said covid and coughed real bad. edit - to be fair I don't go out of my way to visit them these days so really havent given any opportunity to see where else that might go.

It's great, I get so much more accomplished in my life when I stop gaming and get the feeling we here are going places.

not all hobbies are created equal .. some will get you outside, some will make you stronger, some will make you smarter.. do you get sunlight exposure throughout the day? some pretty incredible stuff there .. are other aspects of your life suffering because of your really fun game internet hobbies like work / promotions / annual performance reports / energy levels? is your nutrition suffering while you make poor food choices or do you miss meals to do something more fun? do you save any time for exercise and are you exercising when you have the most energy for it? you said you quit video games before but how long did you quit for and was there anything else you could have done to have made it any easier? seeing you haven't posted since before Easter you might not see this for awhile but someone else might who is going through the same motions as you, pretty common here really, best wishes.

Excerpt from Lewis Howes School of Greatness Podcast #1204 Eliminate Brain Fog, Increase Your Focus & Control Your Motivation w/Andrew Huberman a neuroscientist and tenured professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford University School of Medicine.

Hello May! Another game-free month of detox and it's starting to show, I am getting much better sleep at night and here I will tell you how. I took pretty heavy notes from the Huberman neuroscience podcast on light exposure and sleep mentioned above and started putting it into practice so that now I am getting very comfortable well-rested sleep heeding the notes I took. With our lives surrounded with technology (such as computers, cell phones, and artificial lighting) it is very important for us learn when not to use such things and to get outside as often as we can allow especially for morning light as that sets the circadian clock. April I learned my goal for the month was too soon of a deadline so I reassigned it as a 90 day goal. Almost another total computer-free weekend but I took time to download podcasts which I listened to and took a lot of notes on. Having podcasts to listen definitely isn't my idea of a computer-free weekend but at least for this weekend I made the allowance because I deemed the subject I was learning to be important enough for the occasion. Today I will play back the podcasts I took notes on just to essentially proofread for any notes I might have written incorrectly or missed.

Dealing with stress without gaming, this one's my latest go-to and it's incredible.

Manage stress by habitually going outside, this was a big one for me to finally get through my thick indoor-hobby loving skull and I'm sure many people who gamed heavily since childhood may also be slow to figure this one. Doesn't even need to be a hobby just find some excuses multiple times a day to get outside 10-15 mins and build habits out of it and make it longer if overcast dark sky. This is really doing a lot for me and I can't imagine going back to my reclusive indoor ways I have even been able to quit taking daily sugar and caffeine because those outside breaks have become energizing to me and is more potent. Important to get outside like this for morning, afternoon, and evening while the sun is up I firmly believe. Neuroscientists Andrew Huberman and Samer Hattar (and surly others) have explained the benefits much better than I could hope to explain and this is the podcast I heard that made it all click for me, they discuss it together on Huberman Lab #43. Dr. Hattar is a world-renowned expert on how viewing light at particular times adjusts our mood, ability to learn, stress and hormone levels, appetite, and mental health.