Stop Playing Video Games. Start Playing the Game of Life.

I used to be an obsessive Clash of Clans player.

I played a lot and my family didn’t understand why I cared about the game so much. My little sister still jokes of I got angry at her and how I cried after losing a round. They understood it even less (although they were content) when I decided to stop playing altogether.

On hindsight, this might have been the best decision I have ever made.

The Problem With Video Games

If you are anything like me, you don’t just play for fun. You play to win, to improve and beat the game.

You don’t stop with just playing, you watch videos on how to improve, you think about the game all day long, you strategize. I can’t put into words how much of my teenage years were spent laying on my bed thinking about the video game I was obsessed with at the moment.

Some people are find with playing for fun for just 1 hour a day, but when you are obsessed, there is no “1 hour a day”. You will play for as much as you physically can.

That’s not all because of you, though.

Sure, some people get obsessed easier than others, but the games themselves are specifically designed to get you obsessed and playing nonstop.

I am grateful that the physical limit for me was quite low during my childhood, the one imposed on me by my parents. (You’ve been playing for hours, give me your phone, go play outside).

This might have saved me from total disaster. Had I been left to myself… ey heyy… I would’ve played till my eyes burned from fatigue and felt like vomiting. Which is exactly what happened every time I had a chance.

Now don’t get me wrong, obsession is not necessarily a bad thing.

It is a powerful weapon, it can help you make superhuman levels of progress towards your goals if you aim it right. But when your obsession is something superficial and unhealthy like video games, what you are doing is akin to shooting yourself on the foot with a bazooka. Ouch.

There’s no light way to put it, video game obsession fucks up your life. Here’s how it fucked up mine:

• Playing video games is what’s called supernormal stimulus, that is, it overstimulates your brain with dopamine, making everything else less interesting.
  
  I only wanted to play, I had no interest in eating with my family, playing outside, going on hikes with my father, in short, pretty much everything that makes a young boy’s life happy and meaningful.

• It destroys your health, hitting you first in the eyes, then your posture starts to slouch, and many more related problems come from neglecting your health while playing. (e.g you don’t cook healthy foods, you just eat a bag of Doritos and drink some energy drink.. I remember not even going to piss when I played lol)

• You lose a lot of time. And I mean A LOT OF time. If you play for only 2 hour per day (we both know it’s a low estimate), in a year, that’s one fucking month wasted!
  Imagine what you could do if you had one extra month every summer vacation. What great skills you could learn. And now realize that you are wasting it away playing video games.

  

• You can’t focus because your priorities are all fucked up. Your studies will suffer if you are a student, your work if you are a worker, your relationships if you are a human.

• You lose money because all games are either pay to play or pay to win.

• It saps away your energy

• You distance yourself from others and reality

  That may be a far stretch, but I even suspect my car accident had something to do with it. Otherwise how else do you got hit by a car on an empty road if you are not head above the clouds thinking about when to upgrade barbarian king?

But as I said, now I have changed.

Now, I don’t play any games at all.

I am no longer the weak sensitive boy who broke down and cried for a stupid video game.

Of course, I didn’t get here in an instant. I had a few outbursts, and shall I call, micro-game-obsessions, stretched out over time.

But I did it.

Now, I can work with full focus towards my goals, I have more energy during the day, am healthier, more present, life seems more beautiful since I can enjoy the mundane beauties of it, and that’s definitely something I am proud of achieving.

That’s it for the humble brag, now I’ll show you how you can do the same.

The Only Way to Stop Playing Video Games

I am not going to give you bullshit advice like 1. Join a support group 2. Cut down incrementally 3. ..

NO.

That kind of advice is for people who pretend they want to quit but actually want to play and are just too afraid to admit it to themselves.

Quitting is simple.

You just need to do one thing. That’s the one advice everyone knows but don’t want to hear:

Delete the game. Delete your account and worthless progress you’ve spent so much time on. And don’t download the game again.

What?

You can’t do it?

You tried it and it didn’t work?

Has your brain already started to make excuses saying video games are not that bad?

I’ve been there brother.

I am telling you now that this is the best way to go about it, but at the time, I myself didn’t have the guts to quit cold turkey.

But now, I understand why it is hard, and now I how to deal with it.

I will show you the cheat code to quitting video games, that if you use it, not only quitting will be possible, but it will come to you as easy and natural.

Improve Yourself

The reason why quitting video games is hard is because you have no life outside of them.

It is likely the only thing you are good at in life, maybe even the only thing good in your life.

Of course you will not want to quit, because if you do, then you have left the one thing where you have some achievement, the one thing you feel like you are in control amidst the chaos of your life.

You know people who only play for like 3 hours a week for fun, and no more? That’s because those people they have balanced lives. Sure game makers are sleazy bastards, but for someone who has good social life and something to work towards in their life, even the most “fun” game is no match for living.

But I will tell you something: being a bit unbalanced is not a bad thing. It’s a competitive advantage. If you have been really obsessed over video games, you can use it for your own good.

That’s what I did, and what you should too if you are too afraid to quit right now:

• Start building a life.

• Start improving yourself.

• Start playing the game of life.

Self-improvement is the cheat code.

Don’t wait till you no longer play video games to improve your life.

Start improving your life while you are still playing.

Because once you start making some real, genuinely satisfying progress in your life, not only you will be stronger and more able to quit, but you will WANT to quit. It will be the natural thing to do.

For years I got obsessed over growing a village on Clash of Clans.

Then I turned that obsession into growing myself. I started obsessing over studying french, and when I started to see the progress and the beautiful path up ahead, I started seeing Clash of Clans as a hindrance, “it’s because I play that I can’t get my work done”. So at some moment I did what I had to do. Click, click. The game deleted out of my life.

I called self-improvement a cheat code, but that’s not really one. Living life, playing the game of life, these are not cheat codes as in, these are no shortcuts.

It’s the beginning of a long journey that will lead you to great places you can’t even imagine right now. (a few years of obsession on language learning, and now I study engineering in France)

That’s your journey to discover, but I will give you some direction so that you can start and make progress faster than I have:

How to Start Playing the Game of Life

Step #1: Start by Building Good Habits

Take your to-do list, make one if you don’t have one, and add these habits one by one to your to do list every day. On Monday, only do habit 1. On Tuesday, habits 1 and 2. And so on. Starting from Saturday, you will do all habits every day.

Here are the ones I recommend you start with (from 1→5):

1. Do 10 burpees a day — gives you a nice energy boost, physical, really straightforward to do

2. Meditate for 5 minutes every day — mindfulness makes everything easier, I don’t have anything else to add here

3. Hold the plank for 2 minutes every day — another physical habit, but this one will test your mental resilience more

4. Journal for 5 minutes every day — like mindfulness, this is a habit that helps you deal with your own mind, which on the long run makes everything much easier

5. Plan your day for tomorrow every evening — make sure you have something that makes you want to wake up tomorrow

Step #2: Make a vision for yourself and an anti-vision

Unlike video games, in life there will be no goals already set for you (in any case, that’s not what you want). You have to chose your goals. And the best way to start is to have you, yourself the project you are trying to grow. I talk about this more here:

Step #3: Pick one goal you want to focus on and every evening, when you plan your to do list for tomorrow, add one task that will get you closer to achieving that goal.

When I learned french, I would wake up, and study french for 2 hours.

I am glad I was too young at the moment to overthink “oh what is the best way to study” and “why am I not seeing any progress”. There’s a lesson in that for my current self, and perhaps a lesson for you as well.

So, once you pick a goal, do something every day that will get you closer to that goal.

If that’s building a physique, do something for that every day. 4 days a week it might be hitting the gym, the remaining days it can be learning how to cook a high protein meal, stretching, or something else.

Even if you have work or school, make sure you find some time every day to do something towards your own goals. Bonus points if you take that time from your playing time.

Thanks for reading folks, everything I talked about above is what I help people as a life-coach.

If you need more guidance on quitting video games, building good habits, planning your life, training your discipline and improving your life, you can reach out to me with this questionnaire: