I’ve talked previously about video games and why we find it so hard to quit playing.
As I have talked about previously, I went through the challenge of having to tear myself away from video games. I want to share my five tips on how you can stop yourself.
Time management
There is nothing wrong with playing video games, as long as it doesn’t interfere with your day to day life in a negative way.
What can this look like?
You might be unable to focus, or even that you’re not getting enough sleep because you find it hard to put the controller down.
You could have any reason to want to step away. What is important to remember though is that time you are gaining from stepping away, must be replaced with something else.
Even if that is sleep, this is something that you were lacking before and so a positive reason to stop. So, simply lowering your gameplay won’t do the trick, ensure that you are going to focus your attention on something else.
New skills
Don’t think that the time you’ve spent playing video games has been wasted, you’ve gained useful skills from it including problem-solving and validation. Now, you can use these skills to achieve things in other areas of your life.
New hobbies (not video games)
Outside of video games, what else do you want to achieve? Is there anything important that you’ve been procrastinating about?
Once you see the value in other jobs or hobbies, you can see more of a reason to play less. Alongside this always remember that your gameplay time wasn’t wasted, the things you learnt from it do come in handing in many other hobbies and activities.
Use your skills to succeed at something that is giving both the physical and online part of yourself value and happiness.
Reframing failure
Anytime you want to change something in your life, there is bound to be a failure. This is with anything and anyone trying something new. When you’re playing you learn that you can fail over and over again but still pick yourself up and try again. And not only try but learn from your mistakes.
This is a powerful skill to gain so remember this for when you dive into new endeavours.
Never give up
As with learning from failures, it’s worth remembering to not just give up. It can be boring or anxiety-provoking, and your default response might be to go back to what you know, but if you found the love and passion from gaming, why wouldn’t you find it elsewhere?
The more you keep doing something, the easier it gets. Eventually, you will migrate to your new life comfortably after quitting.
What this focus is on is rerouting your interests so that you can find validation in other parts of your life.
So, take what games have taught you and create a new, more fulfilling life for yourself too.
