How to Reward Yourself Without Gaming

Gaming has always been your reward. You’ve done well on a test, so you get to game. You’ve finished a semester at school, so you get to game. Gaming is your reward.

But this is also one of the reasons why you can relapse after you quit. You’ve done well and you want to reward yourself. So how do you reward yourself without gaming? Press play:

Now there’s nothing inherently wrong with gaming as a reward. If you want to game, go ahead and game. But if you’re reading this right now it’s safe for me to assume that you want to remove gaming from your life.

So if that’s the case, and you want to avoid a relapse in the future, it’s important for you to find new ways to reward yourself without using gaming.

It’s this notion of being intentional that is so important on your journey. If you’re not intentional with the things you do, you’ll go to what you know (your habits), and in this case, your habit is to game.

There are 2 types of rewards:

1. Extrinsic

This is a reward that is outside of yourself. Maybe it’s something you purchase. An example from my own life is that every time I go to the gym, I buy myself a coconut water. It’s a simple reward I look forward to and it encourages me to go to the gym more often.

Now the opportunity to reward myself with a coconut water isn’t the only reason I go to the gym. I also go because it makes my body feel better, it builds strength and muscle, I look better in clothes and it helps me de-stress. But a silly little coconut water also helps a lot. 🙂

2. Intrinsic

This is a reward that is inside of yourself – how you feel about yourself. An example from my own life is when I spoke at TEDxBoulder.

What you might not know about that talk is that I had never spoken on stage before… so I was very, very nervous. What helped me persevere is that I knew once I finished it my reward would be an immense amount of confidence in myself. I would be able to increase my self-esteem and be proud of who I am.

Not because I spoke at TEDx (although that’s cool), but more that I was able to push through the fear and adversity I faced in doing the talk in the first place.

I didn’t need to have a coconut water after TEDxBoulder because the sense of pride I had in myself was enough.

Back to you

How can you play with this and learn more about yourself? What extrinsic rewards could you have? What about intrinsic? The key is to identify them beforehand so you aren’t making these decisions on autopilot (which is when you’ll go to what you know, which is gaming.)

Share the new rewards you’re choosing for yourself in the comments below.

If you are still playing games but you want to quit right now, check out Respawn.