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Could Someone Give me Advice on Maintaining a Balanced Life After Quitting Games?


chrismartin

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Hello there,🤔

I recently made the decision to quit gaming after realizing it was consuming a significant portion of my time and affecting various aspects of my life; including my productivity; social relationships; and mental health. It is been about two weeks since I stopped playing; and while I feel good about my decision; I am finding it challenging to fill the void that gaming used to occupy.

Before quitting; I would spend hours gaming as a way to relax; escape; and sometimes procrastinate. Now that I am not gaming; I find myself with so much more time; but I am struggling to figure out how to use it constructively.

I have tried picking up a few hobbies like reading and exercising; but I have not been able to maintain the same level of engagement or excitement that I had with gaming. I also find myself tempted to go back to gaming whenever I am bored or stressed.

Also, I have gone through this post; https://forum.gamequitters.com/index.php?/topic/11009-im-struggling-with-workday-gaming-addiction/ which definitely helped me out a lot.

I would love to hear from anyone who has successfully filled the gap left by gaming. How did you maintain a balanced life and find new activities that were just as fulfilling? Did you face moments where you felt tempted to game again; and how did you overcome them?🤔

Thanks so much for your help and assistance.😇

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I'm currently on a detox from social media and compulsive research, and I've been free of mobile games for several years now. In my experience, maintaining a balance of activities in these 4 areas of life helps a lot with keeping me on track:

  • Physical: exercise, walking outside, playing a sport, eating healthy (prepping and cooking healthy meals)
  • Social / emotional: spending time IRL with family (partner, kids, parents, grandparents and so forth), friends, respecting my breaks
  • Mental (stimulation): reading books, creative tasks, learning new skills or an new language, working on your job
  • Spiritual (mental health): meditation, deep breathing, connecting with nature, journaling and reflecting, volunteering, attending services for a spiritual community you are part of

I recommend having around 12 activities that you can do daily and fulfill you in these 4 areas every day; some activities will overlap and that's fine too (for e.g. playing a sport can be physically fulfilling, and can also be socially and mentally stimulating too depending on the sport). I also recommend that you plan for weekends, holidays and any time off you will have. Not all of these have to be time consuming either; even something as simple and quick as drinking water regularly (which can be surprisingly easy to neglect) is a good way to stay physically healthy and ground yourself.

Reading and exercise are great, but not enough to fulfill you daily. You need more social and emotional connections daily, and you need to take care of your spiritual wellbeing too (not a religious concept necessarily; this is basically covering mental health).

I still get cravings too. But resisting cravings is counter-productive in my experience; what I mean by that is, when I fight a craving, it is similar to suppressing my emotions and feelings. Bottled up cravings come back a lot stronger.

Instead I let myself feel the craving; not submit to it, just feel it out. Ask yourself: why now is the craving coming? How does your body and mind feel? What is the environment or situation you are in? What is bringing up the urge to game? Pay attention to your cravings, because they tend to arise from situations or emotions. These are triggers, and identifying them has been really helpful for me, because then it lets me either:

  1. avoid those situations and environments, if possible (for e.g. hanging out with people who only talk about video games).
  2. Or if it's a situation like work stress that isn't realistically always avoidable, then I can plan for different and more healthy choices as responses to those situations, rather than submitting to my urges to compulsively doomscroll or game on my phone.

Hope that helps!

Edited by D_Cozy
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