Alexanderle

to answer your question: yes I feel more alert and focused. I can pay proper attention during lectures, I can drive longer without getting tired after 20 minutes and reading is a lot easier. Ofc regarding university stuff, motivation plays a crucial role.

I like your efforts and especially your morning routines. But don't get discouraged if occasionally you don't get everything done. Some days will not be filled with bursting energy and motivation so that maybe you will not read for 30 minutes daily. Keep it up

@Vooglet Today I woke up at 5 am. I was ready at 5.50 and was reading for university until my parents woke up at 6 30. Until now, I already learned around approximately two hours. So yeah, I really claim that it is possible to become a hard worker. But like I said there are some things that really encourage that in my case: I hated myself so much that I really wanted to become someone else. Not just copying another person, but becoming a new, "better" version of myself. New social life was shitty (it is still shitty), my diet was shitty, my work ethic was shitty, my family rellationships were not optimal, my health was shitty. I had nothing to be proud of. This already changed. Just the fact that I proved to myself that it is possible to have self-discipline is such a confidence booster. I also have good rolemodels in my life: My sister is a workaholic. Diehard. And she has unbelievable success in her career. So I am kinda born in an environment of hard workers. This helps for sure. But even being born in an environment of procrastinators is only an excuse. Lastly, I was bored. It feels like I was chilling for 27 years. It is time to get something done and to have an impact in this world. ? These things let me stick to my behaviors right now. I don't know about the future (how could I?) but I am confident that this is not a one time thing. About urges: They constantly come. And I still give in to some of them. I am still masturbating, but I really don't care. I still check out nba news during work or watch something on youtube. But it really gets easier day after day. It has all to do with this identity of myself, I believe in. I wrote something somewhere in this forum like "how to really change your life". There might be some things that could be helpful. Especially that thing about atomic habits. I unknowingly did what the author said for around half a year, before I read an article about it. My overall noob advice, because I really just started and have nothing to show yet: Don't look so much at the results like counting days, measuring your weight or the average of your grades and fall in love with the process of self optimation and your vary core, where everything starts: Your identity. The results will come for sure. My next big project will be my social life. Some really interesting things you mentioned like that Ted talk. I should check that out. Loved your baby duck analogy ?

Right now, everything is going alright. I am here with my family having an amazing christmas time. I am organized, I help out where I can and they keep being amazed, how much I have changed. It is just so much more fun. I am really not thinking about games or anything. And of course I try to work as much for university in between. I'd wish to have more time for that, but I guess it is ok around Christmas not to work like a highend machine. ^^

Keep going man. And don't focus so much on "not gaming" day after day. I feel that you still identify yourself as a gamer. Focus on finding a new identity. You are not a gamer anymore. It is logical that you will not go back. You are someone else now. This is not survival: This is freedom!

@DoctorAddict right? xD my life is a lot better already. Far from perfect yet and I still miss the feeling of being connected with other gamers online, but it was definitely the right decision. Still, I will not sell my expensive gaming pc. To much money has been spend. And I can be sure to run every work related program. ^^

@Jordan2020 Yeah I feel you. I think it is just important to stick to it and to not give up. For me having something to focus one like university and the idea of self improvement helps me a ton. So yeah it is good to know that i am not alone with this. And I wish you also mental power and self discipline to keep going. ?

@Amphibian220 i am still sitting home a lot alone. right now ofc it is all clean and nice and I am working hard for university. but whenever I had a sense of feeling lonely I could just start discird and play some games wirh online friends. Now not having this thing anymore there is just this emptiness. Evebtually I will force myself to leave the house more often but it is difficult for me. also deleting facebook takes away another opportunity to stuff the hole with meaningless convos about meaningless thibgs with random people. I know that this is all the right way to go. It is just quite hard for me at certain moments. also right now I have not a lot of conversations going on whatsapp. So yeah that is the emptiness I was referring to.

yeah it is good to have something like that. right now my university stuff probably serves a similar purpose I think

Feeling a lot better right now. Managed to wake up according to my goals and will work a bit on study stuff. Feels good to be way ahead of probably most of everyone. But this is not about comparing myself with others. It only matters to compare myself with myself. Yesterday, I would have the opportunity to play a bit of scribbl with some friends online. I am still very occasionally doing this. In the last 2 weeks probably one time. Or watching a movie together. Still not feeling ready to give all of that up. Not even sure, if I have to. Anyway, deciding not to do that yesterday and going to bed was a smart decision. I feel awake, fresh and ready to rumble. So lets get going. ^^

And you found this job? @Amphibian220

sorry did not see the response @Amphibian220 ^^ i know that one with the thoughts. still happening to me during lectures. kinda annoying. but not my most important thing to focus on right now. 6 yrs! that is truly Incredible. respect. never relapsed?

I do feel weird right now. It is evening and I was capable to work out, work a lot for my university stuff and made great progress. So in terms of effectiveness, it was once again alright. It is such an amazing feeling not to feel bad due to procrastination. I am no longer a slave of my self. The problem right now: I have never felt so good about myself in virtually my entire life, but at the same time I have never felt more lonely than now. Earlier I was close to tears. There is nothing to go to, nothing to distract me from facing the reality that I am a loner and do not have a lot of friends. I know that this will be the next big challenge to adress. One year earlier I started with myself, now at some point I need to also start with other people. I know, I will regret it, if I won't do it. But it does not change the fact that right now, I feel like the most lonely person on this planet. I am not a gamer anymore. Anything, I would do right now, whether it is gaming, or watching on twitch, is not available anymore. ?

Like Amphibian220 said the default lazy mood or more like mode is trying to fight his way back. I can feel it in the morning. Staying up becomes a little bit more difficult. The last two days, I woke up a bit later. Guess I just need a bit more sleep. Since my work right now is learning, I really need to get enough sleep. But besides that, I am finally able to just start reading a document and sticking to it. I still immediately start yawning, but I can stick to it and really read anything. So this is nice. Because of university, I had no time to work out the last days, so like right now in the next moments, I will do that, than I shower etc. and guess I will clean my appartment. All these little necessary things to make me feel better. With that, working on university stuff will be quite effective I feel. Interesting fact: I really really take care of my teeth. Like brushing them every morning and evening for exactely three minutes. On the outer surface, they look good. So, when I was visiting the dentist on monday, I expected to have perfectly fine teeth. Could've not been more wrong. I need dental filling for seven! teeth. However, the dentist said that those issues are not necessarily related to my present behaviour, but could also be the result of my tooth brushing behaviour and lifestyle like 10 to 15 years ago. When I think back, it was horrible. xD This makes me think, what kind of things I did 15 years ago will also affect me today or in the future. Kind of like a motivational booster. In 15 years, I would like to look back and thank my older me for making the right decisions, which will help me then in my current presence. I also have to learn programming python at the university. I don't just want to learn basic things, but really be advanced to have something nice added to my bio. The same with learning dutch. I am studying at a dutch university, but never really tried to learn the language, which is a shame in my opinion. So those are two goals, I would like to address in the future. Never be content!

@Amphibian220 I guess you are right. Thanks for the feedback. But I guess the real challenge is still coming.

@ismailkanaan Right now, I already filled it with a lot of University work. I am really engaged with that right now. Regarding youtube and tv I agree with you. This is basically as worse as gaming. Well not really, but it kinda still is a waste of time and forces me into the consumer role. And thanks for the offer. ?

I was with friends over the weekend. I mean real life friends. Not discord or something. One person immediately noticed that I look a little different. Later they said that I lost weight. It is interesting that it is visible for other people, while I, when I check out the mirror, do not seem to notice these differences. Guess, because of daily habituation. Overall, it was a fun weekend. Not as productive as I wanted to be, but on sunday morning I was already working a bit, before the rest of them woke up.

@DaBest Thanks. I guess there are people, who like to do it more with a step by step approach. Whatever works right? I am feeling quite good.

I am not a fan of external motivation or bragging. But I just need to write this down in the celebration forum. Just a couple of minutes ago, I deleted the following things: My steam account, my twitch account, my uplay account, my battlenet account, my subs for everything gaming related on youtube and even my facebook account. Everything that holds me back to achive great things. I will not spend another minute wasting my life. Thanks to this community for the insight and final burst of motivation to actually take control over my life. Without you, I would have not done it. The forum, the podcast as well as some youtube videos really made me do it this morning. Big change. And there is no going back. There won't be a relapse.

It is happening in this very moment. I had this moment of epiphany yesterday in the evening. When I want to really make this a reality, I have to go all in. This morning I deleted the following things: My steam account, my twitch account, my uplay account, my battlenet account, my subs for everythingn gaming related on youtube and even my facebook account. Everything that holds me back to achive great things. It just had to happen. There is no going back for me. I had a burst like this around 10 years ago. But I never had this kind of mindset. So I think that now, my journey really starts. I am not a gamer anymore. It is over. I now that there won't be something like a relapse. I will never be able to game in moderation. I am one of these people, who just has a tendency for addictions. They are, what controlled my life. Now it is time to finally take control and to be in charge. After 20 years of die hard addictions. I will not spend another minute with wasting my life. Right now at this moment. I have this weird feeling in my stomack. I can not really explain, how I feel right now. Kinda feels like this moment after giving a presentation. This feeling that it is finally over paired with the excitement that I did it. Puh. I would have never actually do that without this community. Ofc, I will not start counting the days. This will otherwise imply that I would have to count forever. It is not worth it. It is actually counterproductive. If you read this right now: Stop counting your days of being gaming free. It is the same like a being on a diet. There is always this implication that you will stop it! But this is not the time to stop. This is the time to make progress. Thanks for everyone in this forum. You are amazing.

Really cool new experience Yesterday, I went to the hairdresser, because it has been a couple of months, since I have been there. What was strange was that for the first time in my life, I actually managed to have a good and smooth conversation with the woman cutting my hair. This is not about sexual interest and this stuff. Just causal smalltalk. I tried not to think about it too much and it actually worked out quite well. It did not really felt forced, but was very intriguing actually. I had conversations before, where I briefly answered a question of the person and all the sudden the convesation would be over. So many visits, where I silently were just waiting to be done and get our of there. Trying to look away and not really communicating with everyone. But this time was different. So the way I am behaving right now must have some kind of influence, which I think is rats. But even more the fact that the woman immediately asked me, what is a modern right now and showed me some magazine. I now have a new haircut and feel sooo good. Before, they only just did, what I asked them to do and that was it. So this was just one visit that was surely giving me some unexpected surprises. Today, two girls noticed that I have a new haircut and said that it looks good. So I guess that is the way to go now. If I continue like that, I will never have a desire again to go back to my old life. I mean not everything is perfectly smooth yet. Today I was so tired after awaking early that I still had to nap for another 20 minutes before going to university. But that was just the result of not enough sleep. Still a lot of adjustments necessary for my new lifestyle, because sleep is important. I am not beginning to talk about that nofap thing. That is one big struggle. But still no porn ever since. Fun fact: Yesterday, all the sudden I had the desire to start steam and check out, how many hours I have played in total over the course of the last years. I had this Steam account since 2014, so this is only a number for this time period with steam alone. I am not starting with other platforms or the time before that. To make it fast: The time was around half a year. This was actually a shock!!! It is like for half a year, I was doing nothing. Not learning anything new. Not meeting people in the real world. Not working on improving myself. Just sitting in front of a screen and trying to achive something meaningless. But the good news. In the last two weeks. It has only been around 1 hour that I played something. This is a process still, but I am going forward. Not stopping now. And this community is already helpful. The idea with the journal is nuts. So good to just write down stuff that I would never really share with anyone. So yeah. Thanks already, even though I am still quite new. For everyone out there struggling. Start now. Don't wait any longer to change your life. Don't waste another 6 months.

@voidedhalestorms Another good trick that I can use.Thank you for that! Right now I am in this position, where I can do it occasionally. But especially, when I am talking with someone, all the sudden I just start to look down or avoid their gazes. Not very good. So every new insight might be worth trying out. I like the idea of thinking about it as a fun activity. But we will see how it goes.

So you have a new habit at certain intervals? What are the intervals and how do you manage this whole approach? Btw, sorry to hear about you back problems. Hope it gets better soon.

Anyway, I just write something for today as well: I relapsed on my nofap adventure. It is such a hard thing for me. But it is not as much of a problem, as it may appear to be, because the most important thing is to get rid of the pornography addiction. Since that did not happen. I am still happy. The curious thing however is that immediately after relapsing, I fell back into some kind of old habits: I immediately started look for ways to procrastinate. When I think about it, this often happened to me after fapping. Normally, this would lead to a procrastination cycle and I would waste valuable hours with bullshit. However, this time I am breaking this cycle by writing this text right here. I will soon start to work again, because I still have two more hours, before I have to go to university (woke up at five). Today I will try to focus on this nose thing, to see, if it helps me with my eye contact issues. But I feel confident today despite my earlier "failure". For instance, I shaved quite nice, even though my skin reacted a little bit to the razor. But I have some nice lines and contours, so this is awesome. Btw, I also listened to another episode of the art of charm podcast. It was episode 266 with Josh Shipp - Wishful thinking is not a strategy. It was so good and so insightful. I can really recommend it. Those guys really manage to create this "aha-moment", which makes you feel caught, because some of the things you struggled with yourself. And now it is time for me to get to work. A failure is nothing that should put me down, but encourages me to work harder. It is a long way to go.

A little update about yesterday, because I was to tired to do it after driving back home. I really get shit done now. I just start working and finish pretty much whatever I want. However, I still think that I could do so much better. Youtube, facebook and other kind of websites really pose a huge source of distraction. On my main browser, I installed an extension to block those websites after 20 minutes starting from my wakeup time (5 to 6.30) to 5 pm. This absolutely helps me to stay productive. The best option is the nuke ability, where I do not have a timer, but it is blocked immediately for as many hours as I want. I can not deinstall the extension during this time and I never really want to. But it is just crazy, how often I still open youtube or something just without any good reason in the middle of my work. Since there is then the message that it is blocked right now, but it is insane how often this happens. I swear, at least 5 to 10 times within a 60 minute timeframe. Despite all of my huge changes and my work ethic, there is still this procrastination mentality. I have to fight this. Such a time waster. Regardless, yesterday was pretty great. It was nice, just to get the positive feedback of my family.