How to Quit Gaming in College – The Ultimate Guide

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On college campuses around the world, millions of students are being impacted by a silent phenomenon: Problematic gaming.

Student affairs departments are under more strain than ever before and technology has become a central part of the student learning experience.

It’s no wonder then that with this increased reliance on technology, many people have turned a blind eye to the negative consequences beginning to arise.

But, what if you’re one of these students?

You know that you’re spending too much time in front of a screen, and you want to make real, actionable, change. But, you have no idea how.

Do any of these sound familiar?

• You don’t have as great a social life as you’d like, and you’ve been suffering from depression or anxiety
• You’ve stayed up late playing video games because you were procrastinating or just wanted to escape real life
• You’ve halfheartedly attempted to complete your work the night before but knew you could do better
• After a spur of motivation, you vow not to stay up late again, and try to reset your sleep schedule with an all-nighter
• It works! But a few days later you’re back to your old routines

Let’s face it, if you’re in this position it’s not easy to escape from. Either you have all the knowledge but lack the discipline to make it work, or you are disciplined, but you have no idea where to start.

Fortunately, this article exists. Don’t just read it and expect your life to change, though. You have to go all in. You have to commit to making your life better.

How to Quit Gaming in College: An Overview

Before we get started, I wanted to remind you that this isn’t go to be easy. There are going to be times where you want to give up. Times where you want to do nothing else but go back to your old routines.

This isn’t a sprint. You can’t do 30 days of hard work and expect everything to be perfect.

This is a journey.

Don’t let this put you off, though. Myself, and thousands of others, are proof that there is a light at the end of the tunnel.

My College Gaming Addiction Story

I’m James. I played my first video game when I was 4 years old. Super Mario 64 to be precise.

Initially, gaming was a family treat. Once a week we’d get a console out, either the Nintendo 64 or SEGA Megadrive, and play for a few hours in the evening.

As time went on, and as technology became more powerful, I found myself spending much more time in front the screen.

Don’t get me wrong, I still had an incredibly active life.

Growing up in a small rural town in England ensured I had my fair share of the outdoors. I played football with my friends at the park, I rode my bike down to the shops, and I was even a part of the local Scout group.

It wasn’t until the Xbox 360 came out, and online gaming took over, that I really started to get hooked. I even had to delete my Xbox account at one point.

I still remember the Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion coming out. Watching the sweeping panoramas of the introduction cutscene is a memory that still remains to this day.

Combine the immersive RPG gameplay of Oblivion with the cutting edge multiplayer of Call of Duty 4 and I was in heaven.

It wasn’t just me and my cousin trying to avoid screen cheating, I could play with anyone. Anywhere. It was incredible.

As soon as I got in from school I’d meet all of my friends and we’d waste the evening away ‘fragging noobs’ together. The next day we’d reminisce some of the epic moments that happened the night before, and come school ending, we’d repeat the process all over again.

For me, however, gaming was always something more than it was for my friends. I was great at it. I enjoyed it.

More than anything, though… I escaped in it.

Gaming was a place for me to escape my real-world problems; overdue homework, bad relationships, a deteriorating mental health.

That’s when it became a problem.

Once I got to college, I suddenly found myself inundated with responsibility. I’d never been in a position where it was solely up to me, and me alone, to get my work done, to cook, clean and do laundry. I was in over my head.

What did I do? I played video games.

I wasn’t even enjoying them at this point. They were just a means to escape from all of the problems that I’d caused. When I was inside that world these problems disappeared.

I was in control.

Nothing can harm you when you’re inside a video game. Sure, you can die or lose the game, but in reality what really happens? Nothing. Absolutely nothing at all.

You simply hit respawn and you’re alive again.

The real world isn’t like that, but I never had anyone tell me. I had to find out the hard way.

Before you get too down, this story does end well… Eventually.

How Tai Lopez and His Garage Saved My Life

Yes, you read that correctly. Sometime in my second year, something changed inside me.

You might remember a certain sleazy-looking businessman standing in front of a new Lamborghini, talking about how he reads a book a day and has gained so much ‘knawledge’.

I don’t think I’d ever watched an entire YouTube ad, not least one that is 10 minutes long. But there was something about this one that made me stay. 10 minutes later and I’d been introduced into the world of entrepreneurship.

I had always had a traditional view on life. Get good grades, go to college, get a good job, buy a home, etc. After that one video I realised an entirely different path existed. One where I could be free to do what I want, where I want.

I always think of that day as the time I stopped caring out university.

I spent a lot of time blaming depression, gaming, or anxiety on me dropping out of university. In reality, however, I think I just stopped putting my heart into it. I knew I wanted something else.

It was after being made aware of the world of personal development, that I decided to look at what I could change in my life.

The first thing to go? Gaming.

I did a quick Google search on How to quit gaming in college, and up popped Game Quitters.

Everything I read in the Respawn Guide resonated with me on another level. It was as if Cam had the script to the last 6 years of my life.

I immediately started a journal on the forums, and started my journey into overcoming video game addiction.

What a journey it was.

Fast forward 4 years, and after countless times going in and out of gaming I finally managed to beat it.

During that time I’d been in deep pits of depression, I became a Twitch Streamer and #1 player in the world, I tried playing in moderation, and I even deleted all of my games.

It was an uphill battle. One that took much longer than I initially thought it would. Despite all of that, it did eventually end. I overcame my addiction, and I don’t think I’ll play video games again for the rest of my life.

Now I’m writing this article having just started a new life in Thailand. I get to travel the world, work from wherever I want, eat meals for £1 and meet amazing people.

Real-life is definitely worth fighting for.

How to Quit Playing Video Games in College Now

A quick recap:

• This isn’t going to be easy, you will struggle at times.
• Quitting gaming is a marathon, not a sprint.
• You have to be willing to commit 100%. No half measures.
• Don’t be afraid to ask for help. It helped me through my journey, and it will help you too.
• Make sure you start today. Not tomorrow. Not next week. Today.

Let’s get started.

Step 1: Understand Why You Play Video Games

In our experience, we’ve found four specific reasons why we game:

1. Temporary escape.
2. Social connection.
3. Constant measurable growth.
4. Challenging.

These are all basic needs, and it’s more than possible to fulfill them all in your everyday life. However, gaming is so good at doing this already, what’s the point in doing anything else?

Let me ask you this.

Do you think you’d be happier if your only social connections are online, or if you met up regularly with friends in-person at bars, cinemas, dance classes and on hikes?

Would you be healthier if the only goals you achieved were higher levels and better equipment, or if you ran a marathon and became a black belt in jiujitsu?

Where’s a better place to escape – inside a video game or at the top of a mountain looking across endless valleys watching the golden sun settle down beneath the horizon?

There are plenty of ways to fulfill those four needs, but it’s up to you whether you choose the healthy or unhealthy ones.

Knowing why you’re so drawn to gaming in the first place is the key to being successful. Once you identify the individual needs you’re fulfilling, you can work on replacing gaming with other activities that meet those same needs.

Eventually, you won’t even enjoy gaming anymore. You’ll have created a life so extraordinary that gaming will feel boring in comparison.

Remember, you’re quitting video games because you want to. Not because anyone else wants you to. You’re in control, and you don’t need to justify this decision to anyone else.

We want to help you quit gaming in college and start living a life you can be proud of. You should wake up feeling excited. Determined. Fulfilled.

Step 2: Identify the Reasons Why You Play Video Games

You’re going to want to get hold of a pen and paper, or your favorite note-taking program. I know, we didn’t tell you there’d be homework.

We mentioned the four main reasons why people play video games in the previous section, but everyone plays for different reasons.

Maybe you’re trying to avoid a specific problem in your life, be it in college or at home.

Perhaps you’ve just had a break-up and find yourself feeling depressed.

Or maybe you just feel like a loser. Gaming is the only place where you can be who you want to be, without anyone telling you otherwise.

Action Step: Take 10 minutes to write down the specific reasons why you play.

Spend some time thinking. It’s okay to go away from this article – find some headspace, go for a walk, get a coffee at your favorite café and really think about this.

Try to be as clear as possible with your reasons. It’ll make a big difference later on.

This is an important step, albeit a small one, that will help make sure your journey to quit is as successful as it can be.

Once you’re ready, move on to the next step.

Step 3: Filling the Void – How to Find Fulfillment After You Quit

When you quit gaming in college for the first time, you’ll start to realise just how much free time you have.

We like to call this ‘the void’.

As you know, gaming fulfills certain needs. However, not only did they fulfill these needs, they also took up a lot of free time.

We’ll be going over how to set specific goals later on, but in this chapter we want to come up with some activities to fill up your free time.

These activities will have to fulfill the same needs that gaming did.

As it turns out, there are three types of activities you’ll need to successfully replace the void created by video games:

1. A Mentally Engaging Activity – Video games are mentally stimulating. No one can argue that. It’s the reason why 6 hours can go by in the blink of an eye. Finding a mentally engaging activity is crucial to give you something to pursue, something to improve. It enables you to see real growth and progress every single week.
2. An Activity for Resting – When you come in from a busy day in college or your job, what’s the first thing you do? Sit down, turn your console on, and spend the evening playing video games. You’ve done everything you need to do for the day, so why bother doing any more work than you need? Resting activities require low investment of energy; for example reading, podcasts, documentaries.
3. A Social Activity – Gaming has only grown to the size that it has due to the presence of online multiplayer. The social aspect of video games is taken for granted now, and it definitely wouldn’t be the same without it. Most likely, all of your friends are online. So, when you quit, you lose touch with these friends too. Human beings are social creatures, and finding activities that let you explore this further are ideal for making the journey as smooth as possible.

Action Step: Write down at least 3 activities for each type

If you’re stuck for ideas, here are some things you can do to conjure up some activities:

1. Use our hobby tool to find some new and interesting activities to try
2. Think back to what you enjoyed when you were younger; climbing, soccer, drawing etc
3. Your college will have dozens of clubs where you can not only discover new and interesting hobbies, but also meet like-minded people that could become great friends in the future.
4. Do you have anyone you look up to or admire? Celebrities, athletes, writers. Do they have any interesting hobbies that you can try out?

You can also use this strategy in the next step when we cover goal-setting, which is crucial to ensuring success. By doing this now, it’ll help to give you more direction when you start your journey later.

It’s also worth noting that you’re not going to enjoy every activity as soon as you pick it up. Gaming has desensitized you to finding enjoyment in other things, and true passion is developed over time through challenge and experience.

Don’t give up too quickly. You will regret it.

Finally, we’re going to whittle down your activities into specific situations. Here’s a great template from our Respawn program that we’ll share with you today:

• To be mentally engaged my go-to activity will be:
• When I’m tired my go-to activity will be:
• To make more friends my go-to activity will be:
• When I feel bored my go-to activity will be:
• When I’m feeling stressed my go-to activity will be:

Oh, and try to come up with backups for the main types of activities. Some times you simply won’t want to do your main one, so it’s always a good to idea to have something to fall back on.

Changing Your Environment Is the Key to Your Success

You might not realise it, but the places you spend most of your time are having a profound effect on your motivation, your productivity, and your mental health.

I found it much easier to avoid gaming if I simply avoided the environments where my video games were.

If I had the urge to play, I’d go to a coffee shop, or the library. When I was at home I had a tendency to waste time on Discord, mindlessly browse the internet, binge-watch Twitch and watch YouTube videos.

Try to think of a few different environments you can go to if you start to feel a bit stuck. What situations would you go to each one?

Once you’ve brainstormed a few ideas, you’re ready to move onto the next step.

Step 4: Goal Setting: Why Do You Want to Quit Gaming in College?

The goal is to look back at these notes in 3 months time and reflect on your journey.

It’ll give you an idea of how far you’ve really come. As humans we tend to underestimate how much progress we really make.

This is your chance to determine the kind of person you want to become. You quite literally get to shape your life into whatever you want it to be.

Without a clear vision of where you’ll be in the future, you’re unlikely to succeed.

I’m a big proponent of visualisation. I often find myself imagining what it would be like to live in my dream house, the feelings I’d get when I’m lying on a tranquil beach, the feeling of waking up next to someone I truly love.

If you can imagine it, you can achieve it. If you can dream it, you can become it. -William Arthur Ward

You don’t have to think too big to start with. As long as you have some concrete goals in place, you’ll be 10x better off than without them.

How to Create SMART Goals

SMART simply stands for:

Specific.

Measurable.

Attainable.

Realistic.

Time-sensitive.

It’s a common method of goal-setting that will really help you follow through on what you want to achieve.

For example, you might want to start playing the piano when you quit gaming in college.

But, having the goal to “play piano” won’t be taken as seriously as “within 3 months I will be able to play Clair de Lune by Debussy.”

See the difference?

“I want to learn Spanish” VS “I will take 2 Spanish lessons every week and pass the B1 conversational level test within 6 months”.

Use this framework to set some goals of your own. If there’s something you’ve always wanted to do since you were a kid, this is the place to put it into writing.

If you have absolutely no idea what you want to do, that’s OK. Take some time off to have a think. Start small. What’s a project you could launch? What’s a new skill you’ve always wanted to learn?

Action Step: Spend some time writing down what you want to achieve after you quit gaming in college using the SMART goal formula.

This step might take the most time out of all of them. But, as we said, this is a marathon, not a sprint.

In a months time, you might even find yourself wanting to do something completely different.

All that matters is you hit the ground running. The easier you make the start of this journey for yourself, the more successful you will be.

A failure to plan is a plan to fail.

If you start without any clear directions of what to do, you’ll spend your time watching YouTube or mindlessly browsing the internet.

Now’s the time to shape your future.

Step 5: Overcoming Poor Mindsets

Did you know there are over 2.5 billion active gamers in the world?

Gaming has become so common, and the barrier to entry so low, that everywhere you go you have access to video games.

This where is where creating a greater barrier of entry, through the understanding of two specific cognitive biases, comes into play.

“Cognitive biases are tendencies to think in certain ways that can lead to systematic deviations from a standard of rationality or good judgment.”

Although there are many cognitive biases, we’re going to focus on two of them:

• The sunk cost fallacy
• Loss aversion

Sunk Cost Fallacy

This bias is commonly misinterpreted as the idea that you make rational decisions based on the future value of objects and investments.

In reality, your decisions are tainted by the emotional investments you accumulate. The more you invest in something the harder it becomes to abandon it.

As a gamer, this is something you’ve experienced a number of times. Think about how it would feel to lose a character you’ve spent hundreds of hours working on. All the gear you’ve collected and levels completed, all gone.

Not to mention people that have an extensive library of games in their collection. PC gamers are especially guilty of this. How many steam sales and Humble Bundles have you taken part in only to never play any of the games?

Therefore, even if you want to quit, you’re worried about losing your characters, your progress, all that time invested. You can’t just give that up.

The sunk cost fallacy is incredibly powerful, but when you overcome it, you will experience a sense of freedom you’ve likely never felt before.

Loss Aversion

Loss aversion is the psychological tendency to avoid losses, instead of acquiring gains.

Instead of going out there and taking control of your life, accomplishing goals, and becoming more fulfilled, we prefer to play games that are familiar.

We’d rather avoid losing our beloved characters, than level ourselves up in the real world. Despite knowing, deep inside, that making better choices about our actions will make us happier in the long run.

Understanding these biases is key to understanding your emotional state.

You might think you’ve got the strongest willpower on the planet. But you should never underestimate the power that your emotions can have on you, especially during a detox.

You’ll find an endless number of ways to justify your actions, justifications that, in the moment, will appear completely logical. Yet when you reflect back on it you’ll wonder why in the world you acted on them so irrationally.

However, if you’re aware of what you’re doing, you can steer yourself in a direction. You can learn how to consciously affect your actions. The power to become who you want to be now lies directly in your hand.

I want you to take a deep breath, because the next step is going to take some time to process.

You’re going to delete your video games.

This is truly the defining factor as to whether you’ll be successful. I know that a lot of you will read that and stop.

You’re never going to get rid of your games, this guide is stupid, you know better blah blah blah.

Don’t be one of these people. You’re stronger than that. You’re better than that.

Remember why you’re doing this. Picture your ideal life. Truly imagine it.

Does the person in this future life play video games for 10 hours a day?

Hell no.

So now we’ve separated the wheat from the chaff, we can move onto the defining moment of your future.

It’s time to power off.

Step 6: Delete Your Games

I’m sure you’ll agree that avoiding video games will be much easier if you don’t have any video games to play, right?

Here’s a checklist of what you’re going to do by the end of this section:

1. Uninstall all games
2. Delete all of your accounts
3. Decide what to do with your gaming consoles
4. Find a way to avoid gaming-related content (YouTube, Twitch, music)

Let’s tackle them one by one.

Uninstalling your games

If you’re a Steam user, this one’s pretty simple.

Although it might be tempting to delete the steamapps folder on your computer, that can still leave game files lying about.

All you have to do is right click on each game in your library and delete local files. You can follow our guide on deleting your Steam account here.

For external games, such as Fortnite, Genshin Impact, Path of Exile, Rocket League, League of Legends, you can usually find an uninstall button on the launcher.

You should also consider social media apps like your Discord account and Reddit account.

It’s a similar process on consoles. Just go to your library, select each game and press uninstall.

Deleting your accounts:

This one takes a bit more time, as you might have quite a few accounts.

For many games we have tutorials to delete your game accounts, and for other games if you do a Google search for “X account deletion” you can usually find a guide available.

This step might have been quite difficult for you, you probably even felt the sunk cost fallacy taking effect.

Taking care of your consoles

Most people have at least one console lying around the house.

Whether it’s shared by the family and used for watching TV/movies, or you have a Wii U for those Nintendo exclusives, deciding what to do with them can be a tough choice.

Personally, I decided on locking my consoles away. I put them in a cupboard and then gave the cables to my parents to hide somewhere.

I can quite happily have the Xbox One sitting in the lounge being used as a media center. But reaching that point can take a lot of time and effort.

Some other things you can try:

• Give them to someone else
• Sell them (recommended)

You might be surprised at how much money you can get for them.

Avoiding game-related content

This is an incredibly important, but undervalued, step.

Imagine putting all of this effort into quitting video games, only to spend the next 90 days watching Twitch streams and highlights of eSports tournaments on YouTube.

You will never get anything productive done, all you will want to do is play games.

That’s why it’s crucial to put a block on anything that might cause you to relapse (more on relapsing later).

Our favourite ways to block websites on your browser are:

• BlockSite
• StayFocusd
• Cold Turkey

I found it helpful to put a total block on sites like YouTube, Twitch and Reddit. Then, after a few months I allowed myself an hour a day, usually around lunch, where I’m free to watch something as long as it wasn’t gaming.

If you still want to watch YouTube, I highly recommend installing the Distraction Free YouTube extension.

That’s it. You’ve successfully powered off.

Step 7: Building New Habits and Staying Productive

Before we go any further, I want you to take a moment and congratulate yourself.

You deserve to feel proud of what you’ve done, it’s a huge step to undertake. You had the courage to make a positive change in your life.

Better yet, you did it all on your own. Sure, we provided some guidelines, but you actually followed-through and took action.

Recognising what you’ve done is an important habit to introduce to your life. It’s crucial for helping to build your confidence and self-esteem.

Both of which a lot of gamers, myself included, are lacking.

Here’s a great sentence from our Respawn program, where a lot of the ideas in this guide have come from:

Recovery begins by acknowledging that you’re closing a chapter — one where you played games — and starting a new one — where you don’t.

Most people know what they need to do, but it’s only the few who do that live truly remarkable lives. So from this point forward let’s continue to be honest with ourselves.

SPECIAL DISCOUNT: Take your life to a new level with our Respawn Program which contains an additional 75 pages worth of content, helpful worksheets, and video guides to quit gaming in college. Receive 20% off by clicking this link.

Let’s have a quick recap:

• You’ve learnt the exact reasons why you play video games
• You have a better understanding behind why you get addicted
• You’ve created some kick-ass SMART goals to really give yourself direction
• Came up with some hobbies and activities you want to try out
• Deleted all of your accounts and games, and removed distractions from your life

I don’t know about you but to me, those don’t sound like things a ‘useless’ lazy gamer could. Right?

You’re a damn superhero. You’ve taken your powerful video game character and brought it into the real world. Except it’s not a character, it’s you. You’re the one that’s in charge now.

Let’s take this motivation, this urgency, and this longing to be better and start really taking steps to transforming your life.

The first item on the list – Habits.

How to Build Habits the Right Way

Will Durant, a famous historian and philosopher, once said:

We are are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.

It might take some time to internalise, but you need to realise wherever you are in your life right now, is the result of every decision and habit you’ve acted on throughout your life.

There are some situations that are quite clearly out of your control, but you always have a choice to make.

None of these decisions are unimportant. Every single one is either a positive or a negative. With each decision you make, you’re building up or breaking down your character.

So how can you begin making the right decisions? It all starts with your habits.

Have a quick think. What’s the first thing you do when you wake up? Do you pick up your phone and check your e-mails, or do you get up, grab some water, and go for a run?

The problem with habits is that you don’t realise you’re doing them. But what exactly causes us to build these routines?

This won’t make much sense at first, but let’s use our previous example of waking up.

In this case, the trigger might be your alarm going off and you picking up your phone to silence it.

When you pick up your phone to silence it, you see that you’ve got some notifications so you decide to unlock your phone and read them.

Finally, the reward in this scenario is that you get to catch up on everything you might have missed after you went to sleep. Memes in your group chats, a new video from your favourite creator, whatever it might be.

Before you know, it 60 minutes has gone and now you have to rush to get ready for your lectures. You might skip showering, choose an unhealthy breakfast, or forget something important.

Now let’s look at it a bit differently.

Your alarm goes off, like normal, but instead of checking your notifications you put your phone back down, get out of bed, slip on your exercise gear, and go for a 20 minute run.

Imagine how much more alert and focused you’d feel in your classes if you did this every day.

I reckon you’d see your grades, health, and relationships improve within 6 weeks, no questions asked, just by replacing 1 or 2 of your habits.

Action Step: Spend 10 minutes writing down your current habits

What do you do when you wake up? What about before bed? Do you automatically watch a YouTube video when you sit down to eat? What do you do the moment you get back to your room after college?

Once you’ve done this, try to go through the habit loop with each one. What are your triggers, your actions, and your rewards?

Done? Great.

Now we can go about creating some awesome new habits.

How to Replace Old Habits With New Ones

As empowered as you might be feeling, we’re not actually going to do too much at this point. You see, if you try and do too much at once, after a week or two you’re almost guaranteed to fail.

The key to building habits is to take them one at a time, and build them up slowly. If you managed to create a new habit every 60 days, imagine where you’ll be in 10 years time.

Remember what we said earlier?

This is a marathon, not a sprint. It’s better to take it slow, than to burn yourself up in a month and get angry because you think the process doesn’t work.

I’m here to tell you that the steps outlined in this article 100% work. I’m living proof of that. But ONLY if you take it slow. Grow over time, and don’t try to take on too much at once.

You might be a real life superhero but that doesn’t mean you’re invincible.

Action Step: Create one habit that you want to introduce into your life

It could be as simple as:

When I wake up I will drink two glasses of water.

or

I will read at least 5 pages every night before I go to sleep.

The key here is to make them simple enough that you can do them every single day.

Once you’ve decided on your habit, set an alarm or a reminder either on your phone or on a sticky note attached somewhere you’ll see it every day.

Another great thing to do is get a calendar with those big square boxes, and every time you successfully complete a habit, put a big X in today’s date.

Eventually, you’ll have a long and (hopefully) unbroken chain made up of X’s. You’d be amazed at what kind of psychological effect seeing that chain grow every day has on your ability to maintain a habit.

Read more about the X effect here.

After you’ve successfully completed one habit for 60 days, you can either choose to chain it with another habit, or create a new one.

For example: If you decide to chain –  “when I wake up I will drink 2 glasses of water and do 10 pushups” or if you choose to create a new one – “Once I brush my teeth, I will floss at least one tooth.”

Floss one tooth, I know what you’re thinking. That’s so ridiculously easy. It’s not easy if you’re going from 0 – 1 overnight.

The likely situation is that you floss one tooth, and then decide to floss the rest of them. The important thing is to initiate the habit. Eventually you’ll floss every night without fail.

And it all started with one tooth.

I know what you’re saying as you read this…

“But James, whenever I’ve tried to make habits in the past I couldn’t stick to them… I just don’t have any willpower.”

You’re not alone. I used to think I had the smallest reserve of willpower that’d ever existed in the history of humanity.

It may not have been the smallest on record, but it was pretty close.

Willpower is a skill that can be learned. It’s a muscle that can be trained.

The only reason why you don’t think you have any is because of one of two reasons:

• You didn’t try hard enough and failed to hold yourself accountable
• You tried to take on too much at once and burnt out

Why am I placing so much emphasis on habit forming?

When you quit gaming in college you’ll find yourself feel urges to play far stronger than you could imagine. It’s as if you’re being physically pulled back to the games.

When you find yourself in a position like that, all you have left to fall back on is your mindset, willpower, and your habits. As long as you have some constant in your everyday life, you can take this journey one day at a time.

Heck, even just one hour at a time. If you can build a solid foundation now, you’ll never fail again.

I won’t go into anymore detail on habits here, you’ve got enough to take you to where you need to be.

A good book to read on developing habits is Atomic Habits by James Clear.

Your Life is In Your Hands

There we have it. Your ultimate guide on how to quit gaming in college.

You’ve taken the first steps that few others dared to take. In years to come you’ll look back on this moment as the day your life changed forever.

Your days of being a ‘gamer’ are over. You’re not going to settle for anything less than greatness, and you’re never going to back down from a challenge.

You’ve done the hardest part, but what happens from here is entirely up to you.

A big part of quitting gaming is learning how to effectively deal with relapses. They happen to everyone.

I think during the last 5 years of my journey I’ve relapsed in and out of gaming a dozen times.

It’s all a part of the process. Just remember, there will be tough days and there will be easy days.

There will be days where you’re practically unable to get out of bed, and days where you’ll be bursting with energy.

All you can is to trust in what you’ve learned. Maintain good habits, focus on building awareness of your situation, and eventually the good days will start to outweigh the bad.

Think of it like a wave. Try not to get too attached to how you’re feeling in the moment, just try to be present and aware of what’s happening.

Let the emotions come and go. They’re an experience to learn from.

If you feel trapped or stuck, come and read through this guide again.

Post on our forums and ask for advice. There’s a huge community of people that are willing to support you, no matter what the problem might be.

Check out some of the stories of ex-gamers and learn to understand what’s truly possible if you put your mind to it.

This is your time. Real life is worth fighting for.