Amphibian220

Made me laugh out loud.

Why don’t you level up your physique and health instead of a virtual character and write down at the end of the day in your scorecard: Haven’t overeaten: 5 points bonus Ate healthy: 3 points exercised: 2 points Applied better technique/new routine: 5 points bonus Researched for developing a strong back (new book, read 5 pages): 3 points bonus. Brushed teeth: 2 points Net total: 20 points You have to score at least 18 points each day to pass. If you don’t exercise one day, then divide fitness research points for that day by 3 (so you get just one point). If you don’t exercise for a week, Research for exercise stops giving you points. Cumulatively add up points at the end of the year. Look in the mirror, write down how much your concentration, endurance has improved etc. Next year keep adding those points. Keep researching and looking in the mirror.

Hi CG, there used to be a forum member who released his stress by playing golf. I remember him talking about changing coaches because he didn’t like his first one. I can’t remember his nickname now. Maybe it was you?

Welcome to the forum, i think you should look for a good therapist if you don’t already have one. Also a nice exercise is taking long walks in combination with counting your steps. The purpose here is to prevent any thoughts and it works because you have to keep the counter (just imagine an electronic counter in front of you and keep adding to it with each step). When i did that, i managed to get to 19 000 steps without thinking about anything. It felt amazing and I called it the jammer technique, because you are essentially jamming the thinking autopilot in your brain. However this won’t solve the problem on its own. You need a targeted plan for recovery with a professional therapist whom you trust and are willing to act on. Can you share for how long you have been under the control of video games? If video game addiction is serious you need to include that fact with your therapist in the recovery plan. Kind regards

Welcome to the forum Matt. Let me ask, if you aren’t going to game anymore, then what are you going to do? Where are you going to invest your time and effort? If that new meaning is uncertain/vague, it will be difficult to overwrite your thinking patterns and habits. They will trick you in the end. How strong is your craving for a different life? Right now can you say it is strong enough to track each one of your days in a diary and force new activities into your life?

Welcome to the forum, we will engage with you and offer moral support and advice. I hope you are intending to work on the respawn pack because as Cam mentioned, recovery and abstention aren’t the same. Recovery comes from good discipline and effort and is a state when you discover real goals. Real goals grant you all that sense of direction and purpose that renders video games useless.

Further insight: things done in a particular structured order (by suppressing laziness) will bring great results for your character and mental strength. Eg. You’d like to revise later because it just doesn't feel like a good time to do it. That is an excellent time for you to strike and overwrite your behavioral trait. there are many things your body would like you to do: to sleep longer, get distracted by entertainment, avoid conflicts, overeat and daydream. Give in to these traps and you’ve got a classic case of unreliable, irresponsible person that can’t be trusted with anything. Look at anything that was designed with excellence: people had to go through a lot of pain and deprivations to overpower all the obstacles. Notice how we undermine this process by getting ourselves distracted constantly. And now pay attention to how most of internet is designed. Constant links with chunks of information. Internet is not like a useful book, its more like a yellow press newspaper with tiny bits of information. You can of course find a video that is 1 hour long, but most videos you watch out of curiosity are shorter and dont give you structured useful knowledge. I am only looking for something to get hard and tedious because going through it changes my character. Now take a small object (like a watch) and try to stay focused on it without thinking about anything else. Can you do that? That is a good indicator of your focusing ability.

Just saw it in the news that a special large gamepad was designed weighing 30 kilograms and 1.5 metres in height. The aim is to develop the player’s muscles as he is struggling to press the buttons on it. It looks like an ordinary gamepad, only much larger (about the size of a large flat screen tv) The idea is that you can’t really get hooked. You just tire yourself out after about half an hour of playing.

I think that you will never delay a task if you are taking care of your needs and your mind has returned to a good work/rest pattern. Discipline starts to falter when you are sacrificing too much of your health to get something done. That is why habits like internet browsing and video games develop: because they can distract you and give a temporary escape. They then create an unhealthy cycle of its own. Worked example: I was in the office feeling tired and unable to focus. It was just enough for me to log on to game quitters for mental energy and focus to come out of reserves. This was one of the most interesting observations I made: My mind was refusing to allocate energy until i followed a habit of escaping. Looks like the mind develops a habit of allocating energy to particular activities. Another interesting point is how becoming overexcited or intense about work causes stress. You become so intense that you cannot take a break and just want to continue revising or working. I think video games train this particular mode of over concentrating. A forum member related to me how his gaming habit transmitted into his work: he is a hard worker at the expense of his health. The only issue now is that you have to go against your instinct to develop a new thinking pattern. No matter how much i want to continue working (or how much i want to escape) i force myself to take a break, do something that successful people do, anticipating the shift in my personality that this will bring about.

How much do you actually revise then? From morning till night? I suggest monitoring the amount of material memorized in two different approaches. You can already look back to how much you’ve revised using the old method. So now you’ve got to allocate an hour or more in the day to strength building. It has to be cardio or a sport of some sort because that improves blood circulation and metabolism. Also its good to preplan what you will revise in a day and plan to do the most important thing first. At the end of the day check how much you’ve revised. If you track that, my bet is you will revise way better and more material with the second approach. We tend to be prisoners of our habits and pre-conceptions, so trying a different method appears to be hard at first.

Dreaming (fantasy type) can be an issue because it replaces the real world for you in a way. In fact I consider dreaming a surrogate to gaming or its extension. Dreaming on achieving a realistic goal is good if it is constantly pushing you to work on your short-term and long term plans. The more tangible your intermediate goals are, the more thought out and predictable the results will be and the more motivation you will have (how does it feel to see the change to your chest after a consistent one month work out plan?). If that happens, you will transition into the real world and gain more self awareness and clarity of mind. The converse is also true: the more ambiguous your goals are the less likely you are to act on them. There will be no ongoing monitoring, and the so called willpower will run out real quick. Creating a meaningful goal is a subject in its own right that I will not discuss in this post. Some symptoms that you’ve created a good goal: you are frequently getting out of your comfort zone and starting to develop real male traits, you are emotionally involved and stimulate the team by your energy and passion.

Welcome to game quitters, have you purchased the respawn pack? It comes with a workbook intended to keep you on track to recovery and prevent relapsing. You are braver than the other gamers as you chose to stop playing and confront yourself. You don't want to be in denial. Can you share a bit more about your academic focus, interests and goals? Amphibian

From your post It seems like eating sugar is a stress coping habit. Try switching to dried or normal fruits as your snacks. Also distraction is good during revision. One example of a healthy distraction is kicking a ball against a wall. Really great for resting your mind. So You’ve got to reformat stress coping into something healthy. It depends on your character. It may be jogging, or working on a punching bag. You’ve got to try new activities. Hope my advice is of help to you.

Welcome to the forum and I wish you a lightning success. I’d suggest to get out of your house more often and play your favourite sport.

Hey everyone, the Entertainment Software Association has scheduled this year’s gaming convention to be online due to the covid pandemic. This is a chance for us to send our questions online about the harm that the current technology causes young people. Cameron expounded in detail how the new concept of video games (never ending progression, visual effects, easy reward systems etc) alter the character and take over the life of a young person, you can watch his blogs online. Look at the caption that they have chosen for a newly released gaming console: “Play has no limits”. Contrast this with arcade gaming screens of the 1990s. I remember as a kid that it was just there for fun. This wasn’t serious, you just hopped into one of those racing simulator seats, inserted a coin into the slot and raced a track with a couple of your friends. 5 minutes and done, no compulsive thoughts about playing endlessly. The whole concept prevented you from abusing it cause (1) it would get boring after a while, (2) you had to travel to that amusement park to get to play. Today the games are constantly accessible. My idea is that if we all partake in directing questions to game designers about the harmful effects of current generstion video games, we will spread awareness among all those fans of video game franchises that watch these events. What are your thoughts?

Its cool man, i wasn’t implying that you support any particular philosopher’s thesis. Actually, i am a person that for a long time was silent on many issues I disagreed with and that mattered for my success, and am currently learning to be more outspoken. This actually ties in with the gaming culture, as it is negatively influencing us in more than just one way. It is far more than just losing communication skills, but as a member of the GQ forum articulately stated “ having an inability to care for things in your life”.

Any point of view is ideology. So what is the point of trying to escape ideology? Unless you want to become an atomized, meek person, always refraining from saying what you believe. Hegel is the person who stated that everything that exists is there because it is ultimately just? He came off as a very cynical person and supported the slavery in the German society and the use of German slaves for fighting British imperial wars. Many among Russian intelligentsia were then (and are still now) accepting Western ideas with open arms. So this Belinsky was a major supporter until he stumbled upon a contradiction: “serfdom in Russia is, so it is just then? How can that be? The millions of serfs, their fathers and children who are destined to live as slaves and suffer deprivations, that is all real. So how is it just?”

Great title of the journal by the way: it captures the spirit of one of the greatest drivers of success. When you mention robotics and software engineering, Are you engaged in both the mechanical side of the business and programming? What do you mean by flying cars? i initially thought your nick name was “WeSurftoSurvive” . extreme sports was a huge part of me in my teens. I started with inline skates and moved on to skateboarding. Still remember how there never was any doubting as to what I should be doing. 4 to 6 hours of skateboarding per day was the norm. So have you tried surfing?

Welcome zetlyn. Can you share more about your current vocation? Are you a student or a full time worker? What kind of skills and experience you possess and what major goals would you like to achieve?

Man, you sound altogether different (past 5 or so posts). Much more upbeat. Wishing you to get well, but do put all the necessary work to get healthier over time. You need to research more what will give you mental toughness. P. S. You’ve reminded of my wife’s upcoming birthday.

Are you within your dietary plan at the moment, or was this broken due to stress?

I’d say to look for peers in your field of work or study, or sport. During my placement year I was able to connect with many different types of people. I had a senior colleague who had worked for the World bank in the past and it was exciting to hear that rare type of English expat, who got a chance to visit the former Soviet republic of Kazakhstan. I felt like being transported back in time when he told me about the infrastructure development projects that he was part of. Apart from that I made friends at the boxing gym. Another point is that you can use this moment to develop a very good discipline. Right friends come when you are a master of yourself.

I spoke about a raise at my place and this was refused. I stayed on for two months and 10 days as an unpaid trainee and terminated my internship at that. I think in most cases that its ok to continue working until you find something more worthwhile. Also intellectual growth on the job is valuable. I was in a position where no growth occurred in two years, but the pay was above average. It wasn’t right and it led to loss of learning ability. So if you are learning and the pay is good, I would Continue.

you can express your emotions to yourself in your diary and try new approaches. This works to great effect if you are tracking key issues like emotions, reactions to emotions, strengths, weaknesses etc. If you failed to quit in your previous attempts, why do you think that was? What are you going to address this time around to create more pressure to achieve this feat?

Good stuff @booksandtrees . i think Im missing a lot of these interactions.