Filipe Rocha

Hi LadyRen 🙂 I hope I can help you with this! See, it is completely normal that you care about how others think and feel about you. After all, you are a human being, and we human beings are very social creatures, designed to care about how others see us! This is natural part of ourselves, and so there's no reason for it to make us angry or ashamed. In fact, it is helpful and necessary to help us make friends and belong and live in a community. Now, this part of us can sometimes become a bit unbalanced and overstep its limits, and do us more harm than good. Social anxiety is a good example: your fear of how others will think or feel about you is actually causing you more pain and stress than helping you, and making you take not-so-helpful choices like almost never leaving home. So what we want here is to dial back a bit on this anxiety and restore it to its constructive role, to restore its balance. So this means that we don't really want to suppress or fight back the anxiety, or try not to care about others opinions - this usually won't work and can ever worsen our anxiety! Instead, we just want to allow it to continue being a part of ourselves, but without exaggeration! So, allow yourself to care about what others think - it's a natural part of you - and don't fight it back or try to suppress it. If instead you understand it and your need for connection and even approval, and you give that part, that need of yourself your care, your attention and your compassion, it will begin to heal. And as you yourself begin attending to it and showing that need of you your care, it will begin to calm down and feel more fulfilled. And this is when you will begin feeling more self-confident and understanding that your self-esteem doesn't really depend on others or their thoughts and opinions about you. You will understand that it really only depends on how you treat and feel about yourself, and that no one else has the obligation to like you (and even so, some do like you - how amazing!). And this doesn't mean you stop caring about other people or your relationships - not at all! You should care, as it is a natural and necessary part of you, and in truth friends are one of the best things of this life! But you should only want to have those relationships with those that truly like you, and allow everyone else to have their opinions and thoughts - which are just opinions and thoughts and don't really affect you. And maybe if someday they know you better, they will begin thinking in a different way... At last, if you do look different than "normal", then don't be surprised if people in the street look at you - you would do the same! When I see someone different in the street, I always pay some attention to them - it's just how our human minds work. So do expect that and know it is natural - you are as you are and that's how you are 🙂

Hi all :) I'm Filipe and this is my first post here. Apart from being a final year medical student, I am also a meditation teacher (and of course practitioner). Gaming never really interfered with my studies, but it did limit the time that I gave to this other project of my life, and that is why I decided to greatly diminish it. As I've been practicing meditation for some years now and studying the mind, it was easier for me to understand how I could address this bit of a gaming addiction I had, but I still faced many challenges, and Game Quitters and Respawn proved a great help and insight-giver in this path. Now, I've finally been able to dedicate myself to this project and have launched my first online course! I'm really happy about Game Quitters and I truly believe it can and does help many people overcome their gaming addictions and thus be able to lead better and happier lives. I am really grateful for it, and would like to also give my contribution and help, and this is why I have decided to share with you my meditation course for free! It is both a thank you and my way of helping you overcome this challenge that we all have faced - gaming addiction. As I was reading Respawn, I saw that Cam recommends doing meditation to help quit gaming, and I, as a meditation practitioner and teacher, can only strongly agree. As Cam writes, it can really allow you to develop focus and calm anxiety, and I want to add that this kind of meditation - called mindfulness - is also all about being able to more consciously and intentionally direct our minds, rather than being taken by unconscious / automatic processes, which gives us greater possibility of choice about how we think, feel and act - and this is undoubtedly very helpful and determinant in overcoming our addictions, which are really established tendencies and patterns in us over which it can be very hard to gain control. So, as I read this, I immediately decided I'd love to give you my course for free, and so here it is! This is an introductory course to mindfulness meditation where I will guide you step-by-step into learning and practicing mindfulness meditation in a practical, comprehensive and friendly way. It is designed to be completed over 4 weeks (but you can do it as you want) and hopefully by the end you will have begun feeling its first valuable benefits. I truly hope you take some benefit from it. So, I have created 100 free coupons for you to use. If I see a lot of engagement, I will try to raise that number a bit :) Just make sure to use it now, as the coupon is only valid for 3 days (I can't make it longer sadly). Then after you enroll, you'll have the course forever and you can do it when and as you want. As a last note, I will of course be very grateful if you spread and share this course - after all it's my work! - but please, do not share the free coupon outside this community, as you will be taking it away from those who are actually part of it! If you wish you can freely use, share and spread this other 75% off coupon that is active this whole month: 75OFF_JUNE. So here is your free coupon: GAMEQUITTERSFREE Link to course: https://www.udemy.com/course/introduction-to-mindfulness-meditation-1/?referralCode=FC13C64A718B20F01D66 I hope you like it, and stay well :)