Why You Should Quit Gaming
I received a comment on YouTube asking me about why you should quit gaming, and although this question is a bit silly, as you’ll see in the video I believe there are specific reasons why you would be asking it:
If you’re at the point where you’re honestly considering whether or not you should quit gaming, I believe it’s valuable for you to go through the 90 day detox, which is enough time for you to experience life without games and be able to make this decision with more clarity.
Now when you’re thinking about quitting games you want to understand that it’s a big decision in your life, and because of that there will be different emotions involved, especially ones that involve fear.
This doesn’t only happen when you go to quit gaming though, it happens anytime you’re about to make a big decision.
One example from my life is a story I shared in my second TEDx talk. The story takes place in September 2012 when I thought about moving to Boulder, Colorado.
At the time I was a bit confused about my life and thought getting a change of scenery in Colorado would be the right move. So I got in my car and went on a road trip to go check the city out.
When I got there I knew it was exactly where I wanted to be, but instead of being courageous to move, I got scared, especially about what would happen if I did long distance with my girlfriend.
So I decided to stay home and kept telling everyone I would move after Christmas, and then when Christmas came I would move in “six months.” But really I was just afraid and instead of being courageous I gave in to fear.
Long story short, when I came home from my trip my life blew up with my girlfriend breaking up with me, my business crumbling and coming to the realization that I was broke.
I felt depressed and decided to put everything in my life on hold until I could determine what I really wanted to do, and this included whether or not I wanted to move to Colorado.
Over the course of four months I thought about this move a lot, and tried to pay attention to how my energy felt when I thought about moving. Did I feel energized and inspired? Or did I feel apathetic? Something in between?
So what happened was progressively I found myself thinking more and more about moving to Colorado and feeling inspired whenever I did, except shortly after feeling inspired I would begin to feel afraid.
This was my fear coming up. It became apparent to me that my core desire was to move, and the doubt I would have was fear I was experiencing and not what I actually wanted – a key distinction to make. So I got in my car and moved to Colorado, and it’s been one of the best decisions of my life.
To make a big move in your life:
- Identify your core desire. What do you really want to do?
- Separate your desire from your fear.
To identify your core desire, pay attention to how you feel when you think about doing what you want to do. Do you feel more inspired? If yes, that’s a good sign it’s what you want.
If you then start to feel afraid, that’s your fear coming up, and now you just want to identify what your fears actually are and fight them with logic.
For instance, my main fear moving to Colorado was what would happen if it failed? Well, nothing would happen, I’d come back home and move on with my life. So I didn’t need to worry about that as much as I originally thought.
Remember, nobody can make these decisions for you, only you can make them for yourself, so you need to hold yourself accountable to doing so. Yes things can be scary but life is only short once.
Why you should quit gaming:
The reason I quit gaming was because it was having a negative impact on my life. Even though I had fun playing games, I was burned out, I wasn’t necessarily happy, and honestly I just came to a point in my life where I realized my happiness was too important for me to continue to procrastinate on.
I just had different priorities. I wanted to focus on other goals. Just because I could continue to play games didn’t mean I had to. And I knew if I was really going to start going after these other goals I had, I would have to remove my crutch – gaming – from my life.
Back to you:
So now I want you to think about this for yourself. If you’ve quit gaming, what are you doing now? Are you pursuing new goals or are you sitting on reddit all day? You know I love our reddit community but the point of quitting gaming isn’t to just browse the internet all day long.
If you haven’t quit gaming, why not? How is gaming impacting your life? Is it a positive or are you just justifying it? It’s common when we want to quit gaming to spend a few weeks, months or even years continuing to play before we finally have the courage to take that final step. Is this you? What’s holding you back? Comment below.
If you want to quit gaming, do it for yourself and do it because you actually want to and you have other goals and dreams you want to pursue. Do it because you are ready to step up for yourself and start living your life to the fullest. Do it because you want to earn your confidence by the actions you take, instead of sitting around wondering why you aren’t confident… when you aren’t doing anything to be confident about.
Do it because you want to learn how to make new friends and breakthrough your comfort zone. Use this as an opportunity to learn more about yourself. I’ve got your back and I believe in you.
So what’s the big decision you’re trying to make? Is it about gaming? Is it about something else? Leave your answer in the comments below.
I hope that helps and if you want to develop more courage in your life, I want you to take the Game Quitters Challenge. This is a 30 day challenge I’ve designed intentionally with the latest scientific research to help you become the type of person you want to be, by developing skills in Courage, Discipline, Social Intelligence, Contribution and Tenacity.
It’s definitely my best work yet and I know you’ll get a ton of value from it. Take the challenge here.