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Zakaex

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Day 32   (February 13, 2016)

Reading week is here in Canada Universities (For mine at least), and while all my housemates have gone back to their home in around few hours, I have the place all to myself. Which is pretty nice, the peace and quiet are just what I needed to catch up on my studies... or is it? 

Just this afternoon when the sun started to go down I began to feel it, under the dark, cold night lies something rather frightening in the living room - it's eyes are on me, trying to creep in whenever it gets the opportunity: the thought of reinstalling games!! Ghosts and monsters are the last things I am worried about when I have the entire houses high-speed internet at my disposal. With lighting fast downloading speed significantly decreasing the resistance for me to install games, my mind was fighting against one another consistently.

While battling my urges, I started to visualize what I wanted in the future again - the respect of my peers, a happy and healthy life with the girl of my dreams, etc. All of these allowed me to come eventually back to living the 'stoic' lifestyle I am slowly transforming into, throughout this 90-day detox

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Day 33   (February 14, 2016)

Returning to my daily routine of hitting the gym, this time after going through consultations with a trainer, I am now going through a less intensive program with appropriate rest days. Though the campus has never been more quiet, I am more inclined to explore more places - surely there is more to the place than it meets the eye.

I have also gotten over the urges of video gaming for now, luckily. After going through some of my basketball drills, I realized how much I have improved; real, tangible improvement. For all its worth all that sweat and hard work have finally translated into some result, and I have never been more motivated to train more in my life.

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Day 34   (February 15, 2016)

Got up to the gym again and had a great game with some pick-up basketball - I can feel myself improving on all aspects of the game through training already. Exercised, did some reading and meditated (with the app Headspace as recommended by others). 

Although meditating and the daily reading (minimum 20 minutes) are still taking the time to convert into any tangible results. I am confident that it will be just like the MMORPG's that I used to play: We all start at level 1 with a set of skills. As we use the same abilities over and over again, we accumulate enough experience points and all of a sudden we are at level 2, with new places to go, new skills and new perks to enjoy. 

I believe it to be the same in real life, where the only exception is that we do not get to see an experience bar (unless we track down our goals with apps like Coach.me). I may still be at a level in which I cannot fathom much of a difference from yesterday, but eventually, there will be that 'ding.' we are all looking for where all of our persistence and hard work will radiate out to others.

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Day 35   (February 16, 2016)

Continued with the grind today as per usual. The only issue I would like to figure out so far is whether or not I can slip in more time during the day for my self-development time - reading, watching TED talks, etc. I figured one of my biggest time consumer were the trips to the gym which in hindsight takes around three hours or so of my day out (leaving the house, getting dressed, so on and so forth). But since there are arguments in which the mind and body are somewhat connected, I would be fooling myself to ditch one over the other. 

So with exercising out of the equation, the other thing that takes up my time would be procrastination in general - the time wasted on "breaks" that take up an entire hour browsing YouTube for Jimmy Kimmel/Saturday Night Live talks. In the upcoming days, I am going to cut this habit out just to see how it works out.

Edited by Zakaex
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Day 36   (February 17, 2016)

Had tons of fun with another group of colleagues in the gym today for some pickup basketball, we even opened up some interesting conversations about sports league things which I had only recently started getting into. 

Also, I even started to submit part-time job applications around: I have decided to not only become financially independent from my parents but also to collect more working experiences to learn more about my strengths. One thing I also started noticing is that despite living without video games, I am excited to wake up; results are accumulating from me building on all these positive habits from the past thirty days which gives me an enormous sense of accomplishment - and the need for more!

One thing I am still struggling with, however, is my unfortunate habit of just eating everything in sight - this is especially hard when my metabolism has been increasing after some high intensity exercising almost each day and am on a meal plan for the campus. Tomorrow, I will make it my mission to figure out a solution/cure for this.

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A part-time job will be great. The confidence you get from working and earning money is hard to get otherwise. Also, money creates options for you to do things like travel and so forth.

Very true, all the more to keep up the grind! Thanks Cam!

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Day 37   (February 18, 2016)

Got up late today and started breakfast off by devouring a nice cheeseburger with fries (Still getting the best of me). Once I got back home, however, I immediately found an excellent fitness tracking app called MyFitnessPal. I was never much into health and paid attention to all these fat, salt, sugar I am consuming from all my meals, so this app is going to take some time for me to tweak around to find out what works here.

Reading on other health articles (from sound sources such as web.md), I can finally see how I was overtraining all along. "If you want to lose weight, shoot for at least 200 minutes (more than three hours) a week of moderate intensity exercise with everything else consistent, says Church." Hell, I was forcing myself to do 450 minutes every week with the program I am using! Perhaps getting an actual training consultant will be very beneficial in my case here!

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If you're training to lose weight put more focus on your diet too. The old thinking for losing weight was to exercise more, when it has a lot more to do with that cheeseburger and fries. ;)

Thanks for the tip, Cam. That is precisely what the research has shown me thus far; I've always thought that the vast amount of cardio I do can somehow outweigh the amount of junk I put into my body because of metabolism myths. 

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Day 38   (February 19, 2016)

Had fun again today at the gym, housemates are also moving back in, and the house has been getting livelier now than ever. I have noticed that I was able to converse better with them despite my new intentions of abstaining from gaming; perhaps I just do enjoy talking to people in general. I've always thought of myself an introvert because I would prefer gaming over night clubs, parties and other weird social gatherings. But now with gaming out of the picture, I would feel all the more energized by surrounding myself with people with similar interests. 

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Day 39   (February 20, 2016)

Interesting insight I would like to share today from all the extra reading and studying I have done in my spare time instead of playing video games:

I have always heard and read about how successful people all like to experiment their lives (Even for those who aren't renowned scientists); people like Thomas Edison claims that he has done over a thousand or so experiments to come up with the invention of the lightbulb, revolutionalizing the world. Yet, in many ways society started to confuse "experimentation" with "failure" (Arguably, due to the fail/pass school system that we have nowadays). Michael Jordan says "I've failed over and over again, and that is why I succeed." In my opinion, every time you fail, a locked door is presented in front of you. If you choose to learn from your mistakes (That means taking all the precautions not to do the same thing again to achieve the same undesired result), you will be given the key to unlocking and going through that door. And by going through that door, you become a stronger person both mentally and physically.

I find this method of living rather profound, and that I should also start drifting away from awful habits with practical action steps. To whom it may concern, by being in the Game Quitters community and taking a step to quitting gaming (because it is somehow consuming your life), you are already implementing the same mindset as the great achievers. 

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There was a similar paragraph in Think and Grow Rich: 

People who succeed reach decisions promptly and change them, if at all, very slowly. People who fail, reach decisions, if at all, very slowly and change them quickly and frequently. – –

Very insightful, will definitely check out the book by Greg Habstritt, thanks for sharing!

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Day 40   (February 21, 2016)

Started today by experimenting a new healthy habit approach - to perform HIIT workouts every other day instead of resting after two days in a row. I have also decided to see what time of the day do I work best and the most productively. This method is rather easy by analyzing and reviewing over my daily routines figured out that I am always procrastinating and waiting until the last minute of the day to rush my work and tasks (including the regular reading for a minimum of 20 minutes). Causes for these continuous inconveniences also became apparent of why it is so - By waking up late during the day, I would feel sluggish and have a big brunch first thing, causing me to feel lazy and start browsing some YouTube before going straight to one of my tasks. 

Therefore, a possible solution to this problem could be to begin by sleeping as early as possible, adapt a new early rise and shine schedule and wake up before any of my housemates. I will then have a quiet environment to start off my meditation first thing followed by a light breakfast. This method will ensure that I begin the day off strong, and I can quickly build momentum off of it. Though this hypothesis will bear testing, tomorrow is a fresh new week and brand new day so through this process journal I will keep my observations documented.

 

 
 
Edited by Zakaex
Wrong Date
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Day 41   (February 22, 2016)

Woke up an extra hour early excited to start the day off, little do I know that by not having adequate sleep I got put off entirely to work after breakfast. If it is true that very most young adults have 'optimal' sleep with seven to eight hours, then I would fall into that category for sure.

Also started a goal to lose ten pounds within five weeks, living abroad trapped within the cold weather is just too tempting now (with technology especially) to order food with just a click of a button. With video games and TV shows out of the way for now, this is going to be a new battle.

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Day 42   (February 23, 2016)

A very, very bittersweet end to an amazing day. Finally got to see a Myers-Briggs consultant and figured out my personality type, another step further to building my ideal career. All in all, this is just one stop in the long run in this journey of the old cliche 'finding myself', but as I have written once in the last journal entries, life will be a series of experiments if we are to succeed.

The day ended with me and my intramurals team losing a clutch game by one point, it felt very upset that I also did not contribute to the team other than getting some good rebounds. All those hours spent in the gym didn't seem to translate into the game at all, but it could just be that there aren't enough hours logged into my game just yet. Either way, after shaking hands and high-fiving out from the gym, in the midst of my sorrow I felt rather happy. Knowing that real life is more exciting and rewarding than any video game out there, and that I would much rather practice more on my favourite sport from now on than to waste time staring at a computer at home.

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What's your Myers-Briggs? ENTJ here. :)

INFP. Felt rather shocked when the trained professional told me that the world was more ESTJ built, which explains why I always seemed to be in ESL classes in middle school. I also recalled the consultant telling me to sign my name on a piece of paper, then do the same again with my other hand, needless to say, one was significantly easier and faster while the other was messy and choppy. It was to illustrate one of the 'natural' affinities that we are born with.

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Day 43   (February 24, 2016)

Failed to withhold me from eating junk food today and relapsed on watching TV shows. But I guess this was all a part of an experiment here, as Tony Robbins once tweeted: "When people succeed they tend to party but when they fail they tend to ponder." If the first solution to solving any problem is to understand why it is, then tomorrow may just be a beginning of another set of detox for me in addition to video games.

In the book "Managing Oneself" by Peter F. Drucker he says: "It is equally essential to remedy your bad habits the things you do or fail to do that inhibit your effectiveness and performance. Such habits will quickly show up in the feedback [analysis]. Other than video games, I am still trying to get rid of procrastination, Netflix and junk/fast food. If I have already relapsed before week two for all of those except for video games, then perhaps I can use the same visualization approach I did for continuing the beastly streak so far: Before ordering pizza, visualize or YouTube the star athletes right now in the NBA. Admiring and understanding that I am getting one step closer to getting the ideal body. For getting rid of constant Netflix and procrastinating with it, I will keep on picturing the end goal in mind for what I want in the future and not now.

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